Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXM7265D22FBKAZBP84HY4

Rain hammered the pavements of Camden, turning the cobblestones into mirrors that reflected the amber glow of streetlights. Detective Harlow Quinn's boots splashed through puddles as she barreled around the corner, her breath coming in controlled bursts despite the sprint. Twenty metres ahead, Tomás Herrera's Saint Christopher medallion caught the light as he vaulted over a rubbish bin with practiced ease. "Herrera! Metropolitan Police—stop!" He didn't stop. Never did. Quinn's worn leather watch pressed against her wrist as she pumped her arms harder, the salt-and-pepper hair plastered to her skull doing nothing to slow her down. Eighteen years on the force had taught her that the ones who ran always had something to hide, and Tomás Herrera had been on her radar for three months now—ever since a stabbing victim with impossible injuries walked out of A&E fully healed, and security footage showed the former paramedic leaving through a side entrance at 3 AM. Herrera cut left into an alley, his olive skin gleaming with rain. Quinn followed, her sharp jaw set. The alley narrowed, brick walls pressing close on either side. He was fast, but she'd chased down faster. Her military-trained body moved with precision, each footfall calculated even as her mind raced through the possibilities. The connection to The Raven's Nest. The unexplained recoveries. The pattern that looked too much like the circumstances around Morris's death three years ago. The alley opened onto a side street where construction barriers cordoned off a section of pavement. Herrera leaped the barrier without breaking stride. Quinn cleared it a second later, landing hard enough to jar her teeth. The rain came down heavier now, a wall of water that turned the world into a watercolor painting running down a canvas. "I just want to talk, Herrera!" He glanced back over his shoulder, warm brown eyes wide with something that looked like genuine fear. Not the fear of arrest. Something else. Then he ducked right, disappearing down a set of stone steps that Quinn almost missed in the downpour. She skidded to a halt at the top of the stairs, rain streaming down her face. The steps descended into darkness, into what looked like an old entrance to the Underground. But the Tube didn't run through here anymore—this section had been closed since the seventies. Condemned. Forgotten. Her hand moved instinctively to the radio clipped to her belt. Protocol demanded she call it in. Request backup. But the voice that crackled through would ask questions she couldn't answer, and Herrera would disappear into whatever network had kept him hidden this long. The same network that had swallowed the truth about Morris. Quinn descended into the dark. The temperature dropped as she moved underground, the rain's percussion fading to a distant drum. Emergency lighting still functioned in patches, casting pools of jaundiced yellow every few metres. The walls wept moisture, and the air tasted of rust and something else—incense, perhaps, or burning sage. Her boots echoed on the tiles. Ahead, Herrera's footsteps pattered in double-time. The tunnel curved, following the ghost of rail lines long since removed. Graffiti covered the walls, but not the usual tags. Symbols. Sigils. Things that made Quinn's skin crawl with the same wrongness she'd felt in the warehouse where Morris had died, where the crime scene photos showed blood patterns that defied physics. The tunnel opened into a wider chamber, an old platform where commuters once waited for trains that would never come again. Except the platform wasn't abandoned. Quinn stopped at the threshold, her brown eyes adjusting to the scene before her. Stalls lined the platform, cobbled together from salvaged materials and lit by lanterns that burned with flames in colours fire had no business being. Blue. Green. Purple that hurt to look at directly. People—at least, she assumed they were people—moved between the stalls with purpose, their voices a low murmur that reminded Quinn of bees in a hive. The scar tissue on her left shoulder, legacy of a knife fight in Brixton, began to ache the way it always did before a storm. The Veil Market. She'd heard rumours. Whispers from informants who spoke too fast and looked over their shoulders. A black market that didn't deal in drugs or weapons but in things that had no names in police reports. Herrera stood thirty metres away, chest heaving, the scar on his left forearm visible where he'd rolled up his wet sleeve. His hand clutched the medallion at his throat. Behind him, the market stretched into darkness, stalls disappearing into shadows that seemed too thick, too absolute. A woman at the nearest stall looked up from her wares—jars filled with liquids that moved wrong, sluggish and alive. Her eyes met Quinn's, and the detective felt the weight of that gaze like a physical thing. The woman smiled, revealing teeth filed to points, and turned back to her customer without concern. This wasn't jurisdiction. This wasn't procedure. This was something else entirely, something that existed in the cracks between the London she knew and something far older, far stranger. Herrera backed deeper into the market, his warm brown eyes pleading. "Don't." The word carried across the platform. "You don't understand what you're walking into." "Then help me understand." Quinn took one step onto the platform. The ache in her shoulder intensified. "Tell me what happened to Morris. Tell me what these people are." "Some questions get people killed, Detective." "My partner's already dead." She took another step. "You know something. The medical anomalies, The Raven's Nest, all of it connects. Tell me." A man emerged from between two stalls to Quinn's left. Tall, gaunt, with skin pale as paper and eyes that reflected the strange firelight like an animal's. He didn't speak, just watched her with an expression somewhere between curiosity and hunger. Quinn's hand moved to her belt, fingers finding the familiar grip of her baton. Standard issue. Probably useless here. Herrera shook his head slowly. "Walk away, Quinn. Please. This isn't your world." "It is if crimes are being committed in it." She held her ground at the market's edge, rain dripping from her clothes to pool at her feet. The bone-deep certainty that had driven her investigation for three months warred with the survival instinct honed over eighteen years of walking into dangerous places. "I'm coming in, Herrera. Either you talk to me here, or I drag you back up those stairs." He laughed, bitter and short. "You think you can drag anyone out of here?" His hand dropped from the medallion. "You think your badge means anything past that threshold?" The question hung in the air between them. The market continued its business, indifferent to the standoff. A woman walked past carrying a cage with something inside that whispered in a language Quinn's brain refused to process. The wrongness saturated everything, pressing against her like deep water. This was the edge. The choice. Morris had made a choice three years ago. Followed a lead into darkness and never came back out.