Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTX51QP718H51TB7Z43C44A

Rain lashed against Detective Harlow Quinn’s face, a cold, stinging assault that blurred her vision and seeped into the collar of her coat. Her breath came in ragged clouds, each one snatched away by the wind whipping through the narrow Soho alley. Twenty yards ahead, a figure in a dark hoodie vaulted over a stack of overflowing bins with a clatter that was almost drowned by the downpour. “Met Police! Stop!” Her shout was a raw, swallowed thing, lost in the storm. He didn’t even glance back. He just kept running, a shadow growing fainter with every passing second. Her left wrist ached, a dull throb beneath the worn leather of her watch, a souvenir from a chase that had ended very differently three years ago. She pushed the memory of Morris’s face away, locking it down with military precision. There was only the now. Only the runner. Her boots skidded on the wet cobbles as she rounded a corner, her sharp jaw set. He was heading east, toward the busier thoroughfares, but then he ducked suddenly into a service lane she knew dead-ended at a brick wall. A mistake. She put on a burst of speed, her hand going to the radio on her shoulder. The transmission died in a crackle of static. The figure ahead didn’t slow. Instead, he dropped to his knees beside a heavy iron grate set into the lane’s pavement. With a grunt of effort, he hauled it open, the screech of metal on metal a brief, violent sound against the rain’s drone. He slipped into the blackness beneath and let the grate fall shut with a final, definitive clang. Quinn reached it a moment later, her lungs burning. She braced her hands on her knees, the rain plastering her salt-and-pepper hair to her scalp. The grate was old, rusted around the edges. A faded, flaking symbol was painted near the hinge—a stylized eye she didn’t recognize. This wasn’t on any city maintenance map she’d ever seen. She keyed her radio again. “Control, this is Quinn. Pursuit of suspect last seen entering a subterranean access point off of Berwick Street. Requesting backup and a schematic.” The response was a hiss of empty air. Nothing. Not even the usual background chatter of the city’s night. It was as if the rain had washed the very signals away. Her options crystallized, cold and hard. Wait. Secure the perimeter. Call it in until comms were restored. Procedure. It was what she’d written in her own manuals. It was what Morris would have insisted on. But Morris wasn’t here. And the man she’d been chasing for six blocks hadn’t looked like a common thief. He’d moved with a strange, fluid grace, and the way he’d known about this entrance… it felt planned. It felt like the kind of unexplained circumstance that had a habit of swallowing good detectives whole. With a curse muttered into the collar of her coat, she holstered her radio. She got her fingers into the gap between the grate and the cobbles, the cold iron biting into her skin. Muscles straining in her back and shoulders, she lifted. It was heavier than it looked, swinging up with a groan. The darkness below yawned, smelling of damp concrete and something else, something metallic and oddly sweet. A set of narrow, slick iron rungs descended into the gloom. She drew her sidearm, the weight of the Glock a familiar comfort in her hand. She went down backwards, keeping her weapon aimed into the darkness below, her boots feeling for each rung. The sound of the rain faded above her, replaced by the drip of water and the echo of her own movements. The ladder ended in a shallow channel of runoff water. She stood ankle-deep in it, sweeping her gun in a slow arc. A single, flickering fluorescent tube buzzed overhead, casting a sickly light on a curved brick tunnel. Graffiti she didn’t understand—arcane symbols, looping scripts—covered the walls. The air hummed with a low frequency that vibrated in her teeth. A scuff of a footstep echoed from ahead. She moved forward, her stance low, hugging the wall. The tunnel opened abruptly into a vast, cavernous space. Her breath caught. It was an abandoned Tube station, but not like any she’d ever seen. The old Camden Town platform was alive with clandestine commerce. Makeshift stalls constructed from old pallets and moth-eaten drapes lined the curved walls. The air was thick with the smell of strange incense, ozone, and cooking meat of an unidentifiable origin. A low murmur of conversation in a dozen languages filled the air, punctuated by the occasional sharp bark of laughter or the clink of glass. People—or things that looked almost like people—moved through the shadows. A woman with eyes that glowed like embers haggled over a jar of swirling black liquid. A tall, gaunt figure wrapped in a heavy cloak held up a necklace of what looked like sharpened finger bones to the light. Everywhere she looked, she saw transactions that had nothing to do with any law she was sworn to uphold. This was the Veil Market. A whisper, a myth she’d heard muttered by snitches too scared to say much else. She’d never believed it was real. And her suspect was gone, swallowed by the crowd. She holstered her weapon, the movement feeling suddenly conspicuous and foolish. She was a pebble dropped into a dark, churning ocean. Every instinct screamed at her to retreat, to go back up the ladder and bring down a full tactical team on this nightmare. But they’d find nothing. She knew it with a cold certainty. The grate would be sealed. The tunnel would be a dead end. The market would have moved on, leaving behind only dust and echoes. Just like whatever had taken Morris had left behind no evidence, only questions that festered. She had to see. She had to know. Pulling her coat tighter around her, she stepped off the platform and into the flow of the crowd. The conversations around her dipped as she passed. Eyes, too many eyes, tracked her progress. She was an open wound in this place, her normality a glaring beacon. She kept moving, her own reflection a pale, startled ghost in the glass of a case filled with wicked-looking surgical tools. A stall selling old books drew her eye. The vendor, an elderly man with skin like crumpled parchment and fingers that ended in sharp, black talons, looked up from his ledger. “Looking for something specific, dearie?” His voice was the sound of dry leaves scraping together. “Just browsing.” Her own voice sounded too loud, too clean. “A rare thing, to see one of your kind down here without a token.” His milky eyes dropped pointedly to her empty hands. “Or a guide.” He knew what she was. Everyone did. She was out of her depth, and the water was closing over her head. Her hand went to her wrist, to the familiar feel of the worn leather strap. She thought of the scar it hid, a reminder of a price already paid. She was about to turn away when a flash of movement caught her eye at a stall deeper in the market. A man was leaning over the counter, talking urgently with the vendor. He pushed back his hood to run a hand through his short, curly dark hair, and the flickering light caught the Saint Christopher medallion at his throat. His left forearm, resting on the counter, bore a long, pale scar. Tomás Herrera. The unlicensed medic. The man who’d lost his credentials for helping things that shouldn’t exist. Their eyes met across the crowded market. His warm brown eyes widened in pure, unfeigned shock. He looked from her to the vendor, then back to her, a silent calculation happening in a split second. He shook his head once, a sharp, almost imperceptible motion. A warning. Then he turned and melted into the throng, heading for a recess in the tunnel wall obscured by a hanging tapestry. The choice was back, sharper now. Follow the known quantity, the disgraced medic who might have answers. Or stay here, exposed, in a den of monsters. The ladder to the rain-soaked world above felt a million miles away.