Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXECGMFB8VPHWV5JP7VKZS

The rain fell in sheets, blurring the neon signs of Soho into watercolour streaks across the slick tarmac. Detective Harlow Quinn’s boots slapped a punishing rhythm against the pavement, each stride measured, each breath a controlled plume of white in the cold night air. Ahead, a fleeting shadow vaulted a stack of overflowing bins. Tomás Herrera. He was fast, a desperate, fluid motion against the city's static backdrop. Quinn rounded the corner, her trench coat a heavy, sodden weight on her shoulders. She ignored the burn in her lungs, the stitch threatening her side. Her focus narrowed to the man’s dark, curly hair, plastered to his head, and the glint of metal at his neck—a small medallion catching the jaundiced glow of a streetlamp. He glanced back, his face a pale oval of alarm, and pushed himself harder, weaving through a throng of late-night revellers spilling from a pub. He moved with the frantic energy of cornered prey. Quinn maintained her pace, a predator’s economy of motion. She had been on his tail since he bolted from a back table at The Raven's Nest, instinct screaming that he was more than just a witness. They tore through the warren of streets, a frantic ballet of hunter and hunted. Herrera sent a newspaper stand crashing in his wake; Quinn sidestepped the cascade of glossy magazines without breaking her stride. He risked a blind dash across Shaftesbury Avenue, a horn blaring in protest as a taxi screeched to a halt inches from him. Quinn flowed through the traffic behind him, her hand instinctively hovering near the small of her back. She saw the white flash of a scar on his forearm as he used a lamppost to swing into a narrow alley. She followed. The passage stank of stale beer and decay. It was a gut of brick and grimy metal, a shortcut she knew led towards Camden. The sounds of the city muted, replaced by the frantic echo of their footfalls and the steady drum of rain on corrugated iron overhangs. Herrera was losing steam. His movements grew ragged, his breathing a harsh, tearing sound that reached her even over her own. Quinn closed the distance. Ten metres. Five. He burst from the alley onto a quieter street, a row of shuttered market stalls lining the pavement. He risked another look over his shoulder, his warm brown eyes wide with a terror that seemed too large for a simple off-the-books medic. He skidded on the wet tiles, catching himself against the graffiti-covered shutter of a shop, then ducked behind it. Quinn drew her service weapon, the cool metal a familiar comfort in her hand. She approached the corner, body low, using the reflection in a puddle to track his position. He wasn’t waiting in ambush. He was fumbling with something on the wall. A rusted maintenance hatch, barely visible in the gloom. It squealed open. He scrambled through the dark opening and vanished. Quinn reached the hatch a moment later. A wave of cool, subterranean air, thick with the scent of damp earth and ozone, washed over her. Below, a set of iron rungs descended into blackness. She holstered her weapon, the click echoing in the sudden quiet, and began her descent. The iron was cold and slick beneath her gloves. The world above disappeared, the sound of the rain fading to a distant whisper. Her feet found solid ground on the tiled platform of a derelict Tube station. Ghostly advertisements from a forgotten era peeled from the curved walls. The air was heavy, stagnant. Water dripped from the ceiling in a maddeningly irregular rhythm, each drop a percussive note in the oppressive silence. Her footfalls were loud on the grimy platform. She followed the tunnel, her senses on high alert. The only light came from strange sources ahead—not the steady, sterile light of electricity, but the flickering, erratic glow of open flames and something else, something that pulsed with shades of violet and veridian. The air grew thick with a bazaar of alien smells: cinnamon and sulphur, night-blooming flowers and something metallic, like hot copper. And voices. A low, continuous hum of bartering and conversation, but the languages were a discordant symphony she couldn't parse. Quinn slowed her approach, hugging the damp, curved wall. She peered around a broad support pillar. Before her lay an impossible scene. The station platform opened into a vast cavern teeming with life. Stalls cobbled together from scrap wood and glowing crystal were piled high with goods she couldn't identify. Jars containing swirling nebulae of light. Plants with writhing, sentient-looking vines. Weapons that seemed to drink the very light from the air. The crowd was a menagerie of beings that scrambled her perception; people with skin like polished obsidian, others with eyes that held entire constellations, and some shrouded in shadows that shifted and coiled with a life of their own. The Veil Market. The name surfaced from a whisper on an informant's lips, a place she had dismissed as urban legend. She saw Herrera. He was near the entrance, speaking to a hulking figure whose form seemed to ripple at the edges. Herrera held up his hand. In his palm rested a small, intricately carved piece of bone, pale and yellowed. It pulsed with a soft inner light. The guard nodded, its massive form stepping aside. Herrera slipped into the throng and was immediately swallowed by it. Quinn flattened herself back against the pillar, her heart a heavy, thudding drum against her ribs. This was it. This was the same brand of wrongness that had clung to the scene of DS Morris’s death. The same inexplicable chill, the same sense of a world operating on rules she had never been taught. The official report read 'gas leak explosion'. A neat, tidy lie. She remembered the symbol scrawled on the floor, a symbol that warped the light around it. She remembered the way Morris’s shadow had stretched and torn away from him an instant before the blast. Her every instinct, eighteen years of decorated service, screamed at her to retreat. Call for backup. Set up a perimeter. Wait. But backup wouldn't understand. They would see an empty Tube station, just as they had seen a simple explosion three years ago. She was alone with this. The answer to what happened to Morris was in there. She felt it with a bone-deep certainty. Her partner’s face swam in her memory—a wry smile, a weary sigh. She had to know. She checked her weapon. Slipped a spare magazine into her coat pocket. The worn leather of the watch on her wrist felt tight and grounding. She was a detective. This was a crime scene. Herrera was her suspect. The rest was just background noise. She took a deep, steadying breath, the strange, spiced air a shock to her lungs, and pushed off from the pillar. She walked towards the light.