Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXWN7EEB4A4GX1KHRVGGSQ

The rain fell in icy sheets, slicking the cobblestones of Soho into a dark mirror. Detective Harlow Quinn’s breath came in ragged white puffs, her boots slapping against the wet pavement as she pushed through the crowd spilling out of a late-night theatre. Her eyes, sharp and brown, never left the back of the man fifty yards ahead—Tomás Herrera, his dark jacket a shifting shadow under the gaudy glow of neon signs. He’d been clean leaving The Raven’s Nest. Quinn had watched from a doorway opposite the bar’s distinctive green sign, the worn leather of her watch band damp against her wrist. Just another night, she’d thought. Then he’d glanced back, a flicker of recognition, and he’d bolted. Not the reaction of an innocent man running medical supplies. Herrera cut left into a narrow alley, vanishing from view. Quinn swore under her breath, her pace surging forward with military precision. She shoved past a couple sharing an umbrella, ignoring their indignant shouts. The alley was a canyon of dripping fire escapes and overflowing bins. The smell of wet brick and rotting garbage filled the air. He was faster than she’d anticipated, his movements economical, sure-footed. A former paramedic, her notes had said. Seville. London NHS. License revoked. The scar on his forearm, just visible when his sleeve rode up—a knife attack. He knew how to handle pressure. He burst out of the alley’s far end, onto a broader, quieter street bordering the canal in Camden. The warehouses here were dark, monolithic. Quinn followed, her jacket soaked through, her salt-and-pepper hair plastered to her scalp. She saw him glance over his shoulder again, his face a pale oval in the gloom, then he darted toward a rusted iron gate half-hidden behind a mound of discarded pallets. He vanished through it. Quinn slowed, approaching the gate with caution. It led to a set of worn stone steps descending into darkness beside an old, bricked-up Tube station entrance. A ‘No Entry’ sign, faded and streaked with rust, hung crookedly from one hinge. This wasn’t on any of her maps. She pulled her torch, the beam cutting through the rain to illuminate the steps. They descended into a deeper blackness. She could radio for backup. Procedure dictated it. The memory of Morris, her partner, ghosted through her mind—a different kind of dark, an unexplained silence on the comms, a case file that made no sense no matter how many times she read it. She’d followed procedure that night, too. A faint, incongruous glow emanated from the base of the steps, accompanied by a low murmur of voices and the clink of glass. It was a sound utterly alien to this derelict place. Quinn holstered her torch and drew her sidearm. She moved down the steps, her back to the wet wall, the sound of the rain overhead fading with each step. The air grew warmer, thick with the scent of incense, ozone, and something coppery. At the bottom, the tunnel opened not into a collapsed sewer or a junkie’s den, but into a cavernous space that stole her breath. The abandoned Tube station platform was alive. Stalls constructed from scrap wood and rich fabrics lined the old platform, lit by flickering lanterns and strings of faerie lights that cast dancing shadows on the arched tile walls. Figures moved through the space—some human, many decidedly not. A creature with bark-like skin and eyes like mossy stones haggled over a bundle of dried herbs. A woman with iridescent scales along her neck examined a dagger that seemed to drink the light around it. The murmur was a cacophony of languages, some guttural, some melodic, none entirely familiar. This was the Veil Market. She’d heard whispers, always dismissed as the ramblings of informants too deep into their own product. An underground market for supernatural goods. Moves every full moon. Entry required a bone token. And Tomás Herrera was here, moving through the crowd with purpose, not as a fugitive, but as a patron. He paused at a stall stacked with cloudy jars of liquid, exchanging a few words with the vendor, a gaunt man with too many fingers. Quinn’s grip tightened on her pistol, hidden against her thigh. Her training screamed at her to fall back, to call in a tactical team, to treat this as a hostile takeover of a critical infrastructure site. But what would she say? *“There’s a goblin selling magic candles in Camden Town station.”* They’d revoke her badge, and she’d never get the answers that kept her awake at night. Morris’s face, smiling in a photo on her desk, surfaced again. His death was in the gaps, in the places procedure couldn’t reach. Places like this. Herrera finished his transaction, tucking a small vial into his inner pocket. He turned, and for a moment, his warm brown eyes locked directly with hers across the crowded platform. There was no panic in his gaze now, only a weary resignation, and a silent challenge. He touched the Saint Christopher medallion at his throat, then melted back into the flow of bodies, heading toward a curtained-off arch at the far end of the platform. He was leading her deeper in. To follow was to abandon every protocol, to step wholly into a world that defied her eighteen years of decorated service. It was the antithesis of police work. It was also, she knew with a cold, certain clarity, the only path forward that hadn’t already been swept clean of clues by men who wore better suits than hers. Quinn took a final breath of the damp tunnel air, shouldered her doubts, and stepped onto the platform. The sea of unnatural commerce parted subtly around her, a human woman with a sharp jaw and a cop’s bearing, a stone dropped into a strange and living stream. She kept her head down, her weapon concealed, and followed the olive-skinned man with the scar on his arm into the heart of the market.