Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTX3HE17QJBEBRXJN8DGZYH

Rain slicked the London cobblestones into a mirror of fractured neon. Detective Harlow Quinn’s breath burned in her lungs, a hot, ragged cloud in the cold night air. Fifty yards ahead, the olive-skinned man in the dark jacket vaulted over a overflowing bin, his short curly hair plastered to his skull. The Saint Christopher medallion around his neck swung wildly, a brief flash of silver against his soaked shirt. Quinn’s boots hammered the pavement, each step a deliberate act of pursuit. Her bearing, honed by years on the force and a military past, kept her posture straight even as her muscles screamed. She ignored the stitch in her side, the way the rain dripped from her closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair into her eyes. The target was all that mattered. Tomás Herrera. A name that had popped up three times in three different unexplained incidents, a ghost in the system. He darted across Brewer Street, forcing a black cab to swerve, its horn blaring a mournful protest into the downpour. Quinn followed, a gap of three cars between them. The green neon sign of The Raven’s Nest pulsed above a narrow alleyway, its light smearing across the wet bricks. Herrera didn’t hesitate. He plunged into the darkness between the buildings. The alley swallowed him whole. Quinn followed a moment later, her hand instinctively moving to rest on the grip of her sidearm. The world narrowed to this tight, grimy channel. The smell of rain on asphalt was replaced by damp brick, rotting refuse, and something else. Something ancient and earthy, like a freshly opened tomb. Up ahead, the alley terminated at a dead end. Or what should have been a dead end. An old, tiled entrance to a closed Underground station stood there, its roundel faded and cracked. London Transport had sealed these decades ago. But this one was different. A heavy steel door, set into the tiled wall beneath the station sign, was slightly ajar. Herrera was at the door. He fumbled in his jacket, his movements frantic. He pulled out something small and pale. A sliver of yellowed bone, carved with strange symbols. He pressed it into a recess Quinn couldn’t quite see. A low grinding sound, like stone on stone, echoed in the confined space. The door swung inwards, revealing not darkness, but a flickering, sourceless light, the colour of deep amber. The scent that rolled out was overwhelming. Ozone, burnt sugar, spices she couldn’t name, and the coppery tang of blood. Herrera glanced back, his warm brown eyes wide with pure terror. He didn’t look like a criminal. He looked like a man fleeing a monster. Then he was gone, disappearing into the warm, glowing opening. The door slammed shut, the sound a deafening boom that vibrated through the soles of Quinn’s boots. The sudden silence was broken only by the drumming of the rain on the alley walls and her own ragged breathing. She was at the door in three long strides, her gloved hands running over the cold steel. No handle. No lock. No seam she could exploit. It was a solid slab of metal fused to the frame. She pounded a fist against it. The sound was dull, absorbed. “Police! Open up!” Nothing. Not a flicker of movement from the other side. No sound. It was as if the door, and whatever lay behind it, had never existed. Quinn stepped back, her mind racing. Eighteen years on the force, and she’d never seen anything like it. This wasn’t some drug den or speakeasy. The bone token. The light. The smell. It was wrong. It was the same kind of wrong that had clung to the alley where she found DS Morris, his body arranged with an impossible geometry, no signs of a struggle, no explanation the world was willing to accept. A movement in the shadows to her left. Her hand was back on her sidearm, her body coiled. A woman stepped out from a deeper recess in the wall, where she had been perfectly camouflaged. She was tall and impossibly thin, dressed in a long coat the colour of a starless night. Her face was pale, her eyes a flat, disinterested grey. “You’re loud, copper.” Her voice was a low rasp, like stones skittering across pavement. “Who are you? What is this place?” The woman’s lips barely moved. “The Veil Market. And it’s no place for you.” “Tomás Herrera. He came through here.” “Many people come through here. He’s gone now. You should go, too.” Quinn took a step closer. The air around the woman felt cold, dead. “I’m not leaving without him.” “You don’t have a token.” The woman gestured with a chin at the seamless door. “No entry. That’s the rule.” “Then break the rule.” A humourless smile touched the woman’s mouth. “The rules are all that hold this together. Your world, our world. The rules are the walls. You don’t want to see what happens when the walls fall down.” Through the door, Quinn could hear it now. A low, constant hum, a vibration that resonated in her teeth. Beneath it, the murmur of a hundred conversations in languages she’d never heard. The light from within cast the woman’s gaunt features in an ethereal glow. This was it. The thing she’d been chasing since the night Morris died. The reason for the impossible evidence, the vanished suspects, the official silence. It was all here. Behind this door. Protocol screamed at her. Back off. Call it in. Secure the perimeter. But call what in? A magic door in an alley? They’d have her on medical leave before sunrise. Again. Her worn leather watch felt heavy on her wrist. A reminder of time, of duty, of the world she was sworn to protect. A world that felt like a lie right now. “I’m going in,” Quinn said, her voice low and steady. The woman in grey didn’t move, but her posture shifted. A predator preparing to pounce. “You can’t.” Quinn drew her sidearm. The metallic click of the hammer cocking was loud in the alley. “I’m not asking.”