Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXAAYY9R4H3AEXR8XAEJ1Q

Rain stitched the night into a sheet of motion. Green neon from the Raven's Nest painted the puddles acid-bright. Harlow kept her collar up and moved like a blade—short, precise steps that ate distance. She kept her left hand near her watch as if it anchored her to reason. There was a man bolting from the alley beside the bar. He ducked past a shuttered kebab shop, shoulders hunched, coat clinging to him like wet paper. He knew the way. He moved like someone who had used the same route before. Stop. Police. He looked back once. A flash of recognition—too quick to be sympathy, too long to be indifference. You shouldn't have come back here, Quinn. Harlow closed the gap. Water exploded under her boots. The man flung himself through a gap between two delivery vans and disappeared down an iron stair that led to the Tube. The stairway mouth yawned like a throat. He went under. Harlow never wasted breath. She dove after him, hands scraped along metal rails, rain stinging her face. The world contracted to the man ahead of her and the slap of her boots on metal. Someone halfway down the stair shouted, a man on a cigarette break. Hey! Cops! Harlow kept moving. A taxi splashed past and a child screamed at a dog. The city made noise to cover its secrets. The man hit a rusted back door at the base of the stairs and hammered it with his shoulder. It gave. He slipped into a corridor where the cold smelled of old grease and wet stone. He moved quick, a small, desperate animal. You can stop this. The corridor opened into a wider space under the city, a half-forgotten ticket hall. Signs hung like bones: Camden, Platform Closed. Old adverts peeled off in curls. The smell hit Harlow—damp paper, metal, an undercurrent she recognised the second it slid across her tongue: ozone and something sharp, like iron and lime. Traders called out from shadowed alcoves. Voices layered: bargains, warnings, laughter that had no happiness in it. Lamps burned behind cloth-stalls that sold things that did not belong in daylight. Bone. The word found her from somewhere at the edges of the sound. The man paused at a makeshift turnstile. He dug at his coat and produced something small—pale, mottled. A bone token. He slid it into a slot in a post that looked wrong beside the turnstile, a neat solution wedged into decay. The post accepted it with a soft, hungry click. The whole air seemed to inhale. The tile below his feet lit a mottled amber like sun through honey. A panel in the wall shimmered and folded aside, revealing steps down. He moved through. The market breathed around him, close and curious. Harlow reached the post and stared at the slot. Her hand tightened on the rail until she left a pale crescent on the metal. Her watch registered the seconds with military calm. She had options. She could wait for backup. She could call it in. She could go home and put dry clothes on and let the city fold this mystery into its long pile of uninvestigated nights. You don't know what's down there. The voice in the corridor was the suspect's, not a taunt. It was a piece of the city, a wet sound. He had turned his head and grinned at her from where he stood on the lit tile. You think I'd invite you into my mess? He laughed. Mess, he called it as if the market were a child's room and not the place some people exchanged their names for favours. Might have asked him about Morris. Harlow's throat closed. The name came out in a dry rasp, but it was a word nobody else needed to hear. She thought of a photograph, of a coffee cup cooling in an abandoned car. She thought of the last time she had followed a lead into something that refused to be explained. He called your name like it was a dare. Who are you to come near something like this? Harlow gripped the post and felt the cold rake into her fingers. The token sat in the slot, pale as if cut from a jawbone. The metal around it hummed faintly, like a bee trapped in a jar. You want me to ask nicely? The man's smile thinned with impatience. He glanced at a vendor who leaned out from behind curtains of beads and whispered something that snapped the crowd's attention like a bell. Voices softened. The stalls rearranged like predators shifting position. A woman with hair slicked against her scalp watched Harlow with an expression so neutral it read as accusation. A child with a sleeve too short for its arm squared at her and spat—wet and bright as the rain—then giggled and darted behind a curtain. This was not just a market. It moved with rules. She could feel the rules under her skin: something accepted bone as currency, something kept its own law. Her gun was cold in its holster. Her badge meant little where loyalties were traded for charms and curses. The city had carved this out and called it the Veil Market. She had read the reports—old whispers, informants with the edges of their tongues missing bits of truth. It lived under an abandoned Tube station, shifting location like a skin shed every full moon. People sold things here that the Metropolitan was not supposed to know. Tomás. The name slid into her head and refused to leave. The medallion around his neck had once glinted in her peripheral vision at the Nest. Tommy had been explicit about staying away from police. He patched people up, that was all she knew. He used to move in the cracks. She had relied on him when things blurred law and life. She thought of the scar running along his forearm, of his hands always smelling faintly of disinfectant and orange smoke. He existed in both halves of the city—sanctioned and underground. You go in there, Harlow, they'll see you and they'll bind you with words. They'll make bargains out of your name. She said nothing. She felt like a soldier on a bridge who had to choose whether to burn it behind her. The man's finger toyed at the bone token beneath his palm. You running, then? He stepped through the panel as it closed with a soft stone sigh. The market swallowed him; nothing remarkable, just shadows and a space folded away. The tile winked dark. The turnstile held the slot like a mouth with a single chewed bone inside. Harlow put her hand to the slot. The bone was warm. Someone behind her in the ticket hall called out into the rain, whether alarmed or amused she couldn't tell. Quinn—put the radio down and wait. Emergency services are two minutes out. She held the radio to her shoulder and didn't answer. The voice from the radio tried again, civil and careful. The protocol strung itself across her skin like a net. Two minutes. Two minutes to let him vanish, to let the market take him in and fold him like paper. Two minutes to gather a team and make the approach with backup and lights. Two minutes for the city to course off like grease and leave her toes in the puddle. Tell me you have a plan. The voice of another officer, closer, came from the stairs. A patrolman, rain flattening his cap, his torch sputtering. He had a bulk that suggested a lifetime leaning against sconces and wishful thinking. He kept his space as if afraid of the market's shadow. The children laughed somewhere below, the sound like pebbles in a jar. He'll be gone when they get here. Harlow turned her head and saw the token in the slot again. The bone threaded light into the metal. It didn't seem like an object to steal and use. It seemed like an invitation with teeth. You do it, Harlow. You decide. She had a watch. She checked it and the hands told her nothing more than time passing. Her breath made its own weather in the damp air. She inhaled and found herself counting the beats she used to count in the field. In, two. Out, two. It steadied her shoulders. What if it's a trap? The man on the stairs snorted without humour. Traps wore good tailoring and bad smiles. This was a place that traded in other things. He raised his voice to the market in a test. Police. Stand down. This—this is a crime scene. A vendor banged a tray of glass trinkets. Someone behind the curtains hummed a low note that vibrated the teeth. The market's interest was not in law and order. It was in economies older than either. She could wait. She could let two minutes stretch into five. She could call for back-up, for the unit to shut all exits. She could go home and sleep and wake with the smell of the market lingering like a second skin. Or she could follow. Her hand fumbled at the rim of the slot like a surgeon searching for a vein. She thought of Morris the way people think of cliffs: the drop and the silence after. She had been ordered off the case, half-shelved, told to let the sergeant handle things that had edges she couldn't define. She had watched the file gather dust. She had watched his photograph warp at the corners of files. She had let the city's rules tell her how far she could go. Not tonight. She slid her fingers around the bone. It came out with a soft, reluctant sound as if the market disliked losing something. The token felt wrong in her palm: light as a pebble, cold as a lamp in January. It smelled faintly of smoke and resin. Someone below laughed as if at a joke that had already happened. Harlow shoved the bone back into her pocket. She did not think it was smart. She did not think it was safe. She thought of blue uniform and the smell of his coffee. She let that thought be a blade and not a flare. If I go down there, you follow my lead. Keep your distance. Radio every change. A patrolman swallowed and nodded. He could not say the word "no" without sounding small. Harlow moved to the post and dropped the bone into her other hand. She had never been a thief. She had never needed to be. Tonight, she had to be a trespasser. She turned the token over. A faint carving tracked the edge, a sigil that looked less like design and more like a word half-forgotten. She felt something press against the inside of her wrist—the leather strap of her watch—steady and familiar. She pulled her sleeve down though the rain had long since soaked it up. Her fingers curled around the token as if to guard it. You still want him alive? The man had reappeared at the lip of the stairs and watched her without moving. His face had folded into the hush of the market; he did not raise his voice. He only watched with that dangerous patience people wear when they expect others to make stupid choices. Alive enough to answer. He laughed, a short thing. He stepped back, vanished again in the panel's dark. The light under the tile dimmed, as if someone had breathed out. Harlow should have felt the trap closing. She felt the floor beneath her as if it were the inside of a chest and she had hands on its ribs. She locked her fingers around the bone token and headed toward the panel, toward the steps. The air smelled of spices and old blood, and the city seemed to hold its breath with her as she crossed the threshold between what was permitted and what was not. The steps dropped away into the market proper, a labyrinth of draped stalls and murmuring souls who traded in names and promises. Come on then. She moved down. The stair swallowed the sound of her boots. The world above narrowed to a slit of green neon and rain. Above that a taxi horn bleated like a protest. She passed into the market and the light closed behind her with the soft, certain click of things that had always done such work.