Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTY7JQ7QSFEH85JMXD1Y6SD

The rain fell in relentless sheets, turning the neon reflections on the slick pavement into smears of color. Detective Harlow Quinn pushed through the ache in her knees, her breath a sharp fog in the cold air. Ahead, a figure in a dark coat darted around a corner, a glimpse of a Saint Christopher medallion flashing under a streetlamp. “Herrera!” Her voice was swallowed by the downpour and the rumble of a late-night bus. She’d been watching The Raven’s Nest for three hours when Tomás Herrera had slipped out the service entrance, his movements too quick, too furtive. He’d made her the moment she stepped from the shadowed doorway, and the chase was on. Now, he was leading her deeper into Camden, away from the main drag, into a warren of side streets and industrial back-alleys. Her worn leather watch was heavy on her wrist, the strap damp against her skin. Eighteen years of service, and she was sprinting after a disgraced medic in the rain. But Herrera was a thread—a thread she was certain connected to the unexplained, to the hollow silence that had followed DS Morris into the dark three years ago. The man knew things. Things about the shadowy network that moved through London unseen. He vaulted over a low wall, his coat billowing. Quinn followed, her landing jarring up through her spine. Military precision kept her upright, kept her moving. The salt-and-pepper stubble of her hair was plastered to her scalp. She was gaining. The street dead-ended at a high brick wall topped with rusted barbed wire. To the left, a set of wrought-iron stairs descended into darkness. Herrera didn’t hesitate. He took the stairs two at a time, vanishing into the ground. Quinn skidded to a halt at the top, her sharp jaw clenched. The stairs led down to a barred gate, but beyond it was not the expected basement or cellar. A faint, greenish luminescence pulsed from within, and the air carried a scent that didn’t belong—ozone, old parchment, and something metallic, like blood. This was wrong. Her hand went to her sidearm, a familiar weight under her sodden jacket. Protocol screamed for backup, for a containment perimeter. But backup meant explanations, meant forms in triplicate, meant superiors who would dismiss the pulsing light as faulty wiring and the scent as a backed-up drain. Morris had tried to follow protocol. It hadn’t saved him. From below, a low, resonant hum began, a sound that vibrated in her molars. She took the stairs. The gate was not locked. It swung inward at her touch, the iron cold and slick. The stairs continued down, widening into a tiled platform. An abandoned Tube station. The old Camden Town logo, faded and peeling, was just visible on a wall. But the platform was not dark. It was alive. Stalls constructed from scrap wood and frayed fabric lined the curved walls, lit by flickering lanterns that burned with no flame. The greenish light came from softly glowing fungi cultivated in cracked ceramic pots. The air was thick with murmur and barter, a language that was not quite English, woven through with sibilants and gutturals she couldn't place. The Veil Market. She’d heard whispers. A black market for things that shouldn’t exist. A place that moved. Herrera was here. He had to be. Quinn stepped onto the platform, the military bearing in her spine pulling her upright, making her an immediate anomaly among the hunched, cloaked figures. Conversations faltered. Eyes, some with slit pupils, some that reflected the green light like a cat’s, turned toward her. A vendor selling vials of iridescent liquid quickly drew a cloth over his wares. She saw him then. Herrera was thirty yards down the platform, talking urgently with a tall figure shrouded in a grey duster. The man’s hands moved in sharp, precise gestures. Herrera nodded, his face tight with stress. He pressed something into the tall man’s hand—a small, wrapped bundle—and received a smooth, white object in return. A bone token. Herrera turned to leave, his path taking him toward a shadowed archway at the far end. He hadn’t seen her yet. To follow him meant moving deeper into this cavernous space, past stalls selling jagged crystals that hummed, books bound in what looked like flesh, and preserved creatures in jars that twitched. It meant being watched by things that were not human. It meant leaving the known world entirely. Morris’s face flashed in her mind. Not as he was in life, smiling and holding a terrible coffee, but as he was in the morgue, his expression frozen in a rictus of pure terror, his skin marked with symbols no forensics team could identify. The case file was still on her desk, thick with unanswered questions. Herrera knew. He’d treated them. He was here, trading with them. If she turned back now, the gate would close. The market would move on at the next full moon, and this thread would be lost. She would be back to chasing mundane shadows, while whatever had taken Morris continued its work in the dark. A creature with too many joints in its fingers brushed past her, muttering an apology in a voice like gravel. Its touch was cold, unnaturally so. Quinn’s hand, which had been resting on her gun, fell to her side. The weapon was useless here. It was a weight from the old world. She took a breath, the air filling her lungs with that strange, spicy-metallic scent, and started walking. She kept her gaze forward, fixed on the archway Herrera had disappeared through, but her peripheral vision took in the surreal tableau. A woman with feathers woven into her hair argued over the price of a bottled shriek. A child with eyes of solid black clung to its mother’s leg, staring at Quinn with unnerving focus. She passed a stall where a hunched figure in a deep hood sold information. “Secrets for silver,” it hissed as she passed. “Truths for gold. The name of the thing that hunts you for a memory.” She didn’t slow. The archway led to a narrower, lower tunnel, part of the old maintenance network. The green luminescence faded here, replaced by the shaky light of a single electric bulb strung from a pipe. The sounds of the market grew muffled behind her. Up ahead, she heard the swift, sure footfalls of Tomás Herrera. She rounded a bend and found herself in a small, circular junction where three pipes converged. Herrera was there, his back to her, fumbling with a heavy padlock on a rusted door. He was muttering to himself in rapid Spanish. “Tomás.” He froze. His shoulders tensed, then slumped. Slowly, he turned. His warm brown eyes were wide, the scar on his left forearm stark in the poor light. The Saint Christopher medallion gleamed dully at his throat. “Detective Quinn.” His voice was flat, resigned. “You shouldn’t be here.” “Where is ‘here,’ exactly?” She took a step closer, her own posture rigid, a counterpoint to his defeated slouch. “Care to explain the glowing mushrooms and the gentleman with the scales who was pricing what looked like a mummified hand?” “This is a place for people who have nowhere else to go.” He gestured vaguely back toward the market. “For things the NHS won’t treat. For problems your colleagues wouldn’t believe.” “Problems like what happened to DS Morris?” Herrera’s face closed. He looked away, his jaw working. “I can’t.” “You lost your license helping people like them.” She nodded back toward the archway. “I read your file. Unauthorized treatments. Administering unregulated substances. You were trying to help. So help me now. What did you see? What did you treat?” He shook his head, a sharp, pained movement. “You think it’s that simple? You walk in here, with your badge and your certainty, and demand answers? You have no idea what’s down here. What comes to shop.” “Then enlighten me.” The padlock clicked open in his hand. He shoved the door inward, revealing a steep, dark stairwell leading further down. The air that wafted up was colder, carrying a damp, earthy smell. “This is your last chance to turn around, Detective. Go back to the rain. Go back to your reports. What’s down these stairs… it’s not a crime you can solve. It’s a thing you survive. Or you don’t.” He held her gaze, his expression earnest, almost pitying. “Morris was a good man. He asked questions, too. He followed a lead down a hole he shouldn’t have. Don’t make his mistake.” Quinn looked at the open door, then back at Herrera’s scared, determined face. The hum of the market was a distant thrum. Her watch felt like a lead weight on her wrist, counting seconds in a world that no longer applied. She thought of the terror in Morris’s dead eyes. The blank pages in the investigation file. The green glow on the faces of things that were not people. She took a step toward the door.