Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXK2MPHHCF2T16T3ASWPPF

Rain slicked the cobblestones to black glass. It turned the neon signs of Soho into watercolour bruises, bleeding across the pavement. Detective Harlow Quinn’s lungs burned. Each breath was a gulp of cold, wet air. Fifty yards ahead, her quarry moved with a liquid grace, a hooded figure slipping through the thinning late-night crowd as if they weren’t even there. He wasn’t just running. He was flowing. Quinn’s military training took over. Her feet found purchase where others would have slipped. Her arms pumped, a steady, relentless rhythm. The worn leather watch on her left wrist felt cold against her skin. A habit left over from a life of timed drills and objective-based actions. This chase had no clear objective anymore, only a gut feeling that had led her out of a warm office and into this downpour three hours ago. The hooded figure ducked left, down a narrow alley that stank of bins and stale beer. Quinn followed, her hand instinctively brushing the grip of the pistol holstered under her arm. The alley opened onto a quieter street, the buildings older, more imposing. Camden. He was leading her north. Her quarry glanced back. For a split second, the streetlights caught the edge of his face, pale and sharp beneath the hood. No fear. Only a cold, assessing look. Then he vaulted over a low railing and dropped onto the road below. Quinn didn't hesitate. She swung her legs over, her boots hitting the tarmac with a thud that jarred her teeth. The road was a service access, running alongside the tracks of an abandoned Tube line. The air grew colder, thick with the smell of damp earth and rust. The city's hum faded, replaced by the drip-drip-drip of water seeping through old brickwork. The figure was already at a sealed entrance. A roundel, its red paint peeled and cracked, proclaimed the station's name, but Quinn couldn't make it out in the gloom. It was just another forgotten mouth in the underbelly of London. The hooded man didn't fumble with a lock. He pressed his hand against a grimy tile on the wall. A section of the brickwork groaned inwards, revealing a dark passage beyond. The sound was a guttural sigh of stone and metal. Quinn froze, her boots skidding on the wet ground. This wasn't right. Doors didn't open like that. Her mind flashed back to three years ago, to a warehouse dockside and a scream cut short as her partner, DS Morris, was pulled into a darkness she still couldn't properly explain. The official report talked about structural collapse. The file she kept in her desk, the one no one else knew about, was filled with sketches of symbols she couldn't decipher and frantic notes about things that moved too fast. The hooded man paused at the threshold of the opening. He turned, and in the sliver of light from the street, he raised a hand. Not a wave. A gesture. An invitation. Or a challenge. Then he was gone. The stone door began to grind shut. Quinn broke from her stasis. She sprinted, covering the distance in a few powerful strides. She threw a hand out, but her palm slapped flat against cold, seamless stone just as it sealed with a final, echoing thud. Silence descended. She was alone in the damp tunnel, the city a distant memory. Her breath plumed in the frigid air. She ran her hands over the wall, searching for a trigger, a lever, anything. The bricks were cold and dead. There was no seam, no sign an opening had ever existed. Her fingers brushed against something on the ground. A small object, kicked aside in the man’s haste. She picked it up. It was a sliver of yellowed bone, no longer than her thumb, carved with sharp, angular sigils that seemed to shift in the dim light. It felt unnaturally smooth, almost warm, despite the cold. It hummed with a faint, almost imperceptible vibration against her skin. A token. The thought arrived unbidden, a piece of knowledge from a place she didn't want to acknowledge. The radio on her shoulder crackled. “Quinn, you copy? We lost your visual. What’s your twenty?” She could answer. She could give them her location, report a suspect vanished into a dead-end alley. She could retreat back to the world of procedure and paperwork, of answers that made sense. She could leave this bone token here and walk away. But Morris’s face, frozen in a moment of terrified confusion, swam in her mind. The questions that had haunted her sleep for three years. The feeling that she had let him walk into a trap she couldn't see. She looked at the bone in her hand. Then back at the solid wall of brick. Her thumb traced the carved lines. They felt like a map. A key. “Quinn, do you copy?” She didn't reach for the radio. Her gaze fixed on the spot where the door had been, her mind made up. The rules of her world, the world she had sworn to protect, didn't apply down here. To find the answers, she had to step into the dark.