Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTY9FGB92HHY1QFQ6NA58R9

Rain needled the pavement and turned Camden Road into a smear of tail-lights and wet brick. Quinn hunched in her coat and cupped a hand around her radio, the leather of her watch warm against her wrist despite the cold. “Control, Quinn. Target on foot by the Lock. Moving north.” Noise crackled. A bus heaved past and drowned the response. She stepped off the curb and into the spray. “Herrera.” He glanced back once. Curly hair plastered tight, eyes quick. The Saint Christopher at his throat flashed under a streetlamp. He didn’t break stride. “We can talk under a roof,” her voice cut through the rain, steady and flat. “Or over a cell table.” “Not tonight.” He slipped between two cars and came out onto the next street, shoes slapping, medallion bouncing against his collarbone. “Tomás.” “You never use my first name unless you want something ugly.” “I want the truth about the girl in King’s Cross.” “She wanted the truth too.” He veered under a railway arch, past a kebab stand steaming like a small chimney. Grease hung in the air with the smell of wet wool and old diesel. Quinn closed the gap. He threw a look over his shoulder, a flash of teeth at the corner of his mouth that wasn’t a smile. “You’ve been standing outside Silas’ bar for three nights,” his words came tight with breath. “Green sign. Maps on the wall. Pretty pictures. You looked bored.” “Silas served you to ghosts in a glass,” Quinn moved with a soldier’s rhythm, cutting angles, choosing lines. “Then you walked out humming. Where’d you hide the panic, Tomás?” “Under my licence. The one you helped take.” “You lost it yourself.” He cut left into a narrow lane of shuttered market stalls, tarps flapping like skins. Puddles held wrinkled faces of streetlights. Quinn’s boots found the dry patches, her body on rails. “I kept a boy breathing who couldn’t touch iron,” he called over his shoulder. “Tell the NHS about that.” “The girl in King’s Cross didn’t breathe through iron or fairy dust. She bled.” “From a place you can’t stitch.” “Stop and we’ll count the measures together.” He hurdled a crated stack and almost went down on the slick slats. “Hostia,” hissed out of him. He recovered and drove forward, hand to his side where the dark fabric pressed. The scar on his forearm caught the light when his sleeve snapped back. He’d been cut before. He moved like he knew the ground could bite. “Medical bag you carry won’t fix a bullet,” she matched pace, breath even, eyes calculating street, footstep, handhold. “Lucky for you I didn’t bring one.” “Lucky for me you don’t shoot people in markets.” “Try me.” He laughed and his breath steamed. “You won’t drag me where your partner ended up.” The words punched through the rain. Quinn felt the old hole open under her shoes. Water tapped in it. Her jaw set like iron. “Keep his name out of your mouth.” “He had his own mouth,” Tomás angled through a gap in a graffitied fence. “And it screamed before it went quiet.” “Tomás.” “Or what?” “Or I cuff you to a bollard and let the river talk to you about mouths.” “That river knows me. It keeps secrets better than your lot.” They spilled into the small park by the canal, trees dripping and bankside lamps casting long bruise-coloured ovals on the water. He ran along the curve, trainers smearing wet grit. Ahead, a service gate to a blocked-off stairwell sat under a crust of rust and padlocks. He aimed straight for it. “You’re not getting past that.” “That’s what you think.” He thumped the gate with his fist in a specific rhythm, knuckle-bone across iron—knock, pause, knock-knock, pause, knock-knock-knock. The sound felt old. The hair on her arms prickled. A square in the metal slid back with a rasp. Warm breath spilled out. The smell carried spice and copper and something like ozone before a storm. “Bone.” Tomás’ hand dipped into his hoodie pocket and came up closed. He grinned, not with humour. “Same as last time then.” “Bone.” He rolled the small token across his knuckles. The thing looked like a slice of something once-living, polished to a pale sheen, etched with lines that itched the eyes. He slid it into the hole. A tongue of shadow touched his fingers as if tasting him. The locks snicked. The gate unlatched. “Stop,” Quinn’s palm hit the metal, and the shock ran up her arm. “You’re late to this dance,” Tomás eased his body through the half-open gate and leaned back into her field of view. “Come learn the steps.” Her badge flashed in the dim, brass wet and honest. “Metropolitan Police. Step out.” “Wrong currency.” A different face appeared in the square behind Tomás. Not police. Not neighbourly. A man with eyes like slick flint and skin pitted with years. He spoke with a voice that rolled like a train through a tunnel. “Token or bone, officer. Choose right.” “I’ve got questions,” Quinn’s fingers hooked the mesh. “This one runs and people die. You want his mess in your yard?” “The Market is not your yard,” the man’s tone stayed even, brittle with something older than patience. “It is open by right and closed by bone. He paid.” “Then he can pay in kind,” she shifted her weight. “Or we take it outside.” “Outside is for rain,” the man replied. “Inside is for rainmakers.” Tomás smirked. “You like to stare at the old maps, Detective. Come see the ones that blink.” “You treat outlaws who slit throats.” “I treat anyone who bleeds on the wrong night.” “You treated a girl and she stopped.” “She was stopped long before I touched her.” “By what?” He looked at her then, straight, as if the rain thinned and the city held its breath. “By whatever took your partner,” he offered, unsugared. “And it’s laughing under your feet.” Her jaw flexed. The worn leather strap tugged at her pulse. The tiny tick under her skin matched the one under her watch face. Military precision settled over her muscles like an old coat. “You want to finish that sentence with something useful?” “You can’t write a report on this,” he angled his chin at the gate. “You can only learn to breathe where the air cuts your lungs.” “My lungs work fine.” “Keep them dry then.” He slid further in. The gate moved with him. Warmth rolled out in a pulse. Voices drifted up from the stairwell, strange vowels and sibilants braided with the familiar. A bell chimed, thin as a rib. Somewhere inside, someone laughed, and the sound had teeth. “Morris,” Quinn spoke low, the name a rough stone in her mouth. “You hearing this?” The space behind the square breathed. The brick vibrated like a plucked string. The old man behind the grate watched her like a hawk eyeing a low fence. “You talk to ghosts, Detective?” “They talk back,” her answer came without decoration. “Sometimes in blood.” “They talk with prices here,” his lips split in a shape that wasn’t quite a smile. “Same with tongues.” Tomás touched the medallion at his chest. “You can wait in your rain and let me vanish.” “You won’t.” “I’ve been vanishing since Seville.” “You left Seville, Tomás. You didn’t vanish.” “Felt the same.” “You moved to London to help people. You lost your licence in the dark.” “I lost it under your light.” He kissed his teeth, then dipped his head towards the steps. “There’s a stall down there that bottles the last words of the dead. There’s a woman who sews shadows to your heels. There’s a man who will tell you the date you break and offers a discount if you take it early. The Market moves with the moon because the moon knows when to hide. If you want answers, you won’t find them under a fluorescent tube.” “Control,” Quinn lifted the radio again. Her voice stayed even. “Quinn. Break in pursuit. Suspect entered a restricted area. Possible underground congregation. Location Camden Lock, service stair. Send…” Static hissed like a snake. Nothing. “You won’t bring backup,” the gatekeeper’s eyes didn’t blink. “Not in time.” “You could let me in.” “I could ask you for a piece of yourself.” She squared her shoulders, wet hair hugging her scalp, the salt and pepper grain bristling like steel wool under a helmet. “You’ll take a bribe off a man who stitches contraband in basements and give me a sermon?” “That one pays the toll,” the old man’s breath stained the metal with a fine mist. “He understands the road. Do you?” Tomás put his fingers on the inner bars, the Saint pressing cold against bone. “You can’t follow with your badge. Leave it on the step.” “The step won’t hold it,” her voice dropped. “And I won’t leave Morris here.” “Then don’t,” he replied, too fast to sound kind. “Take him back to the rain.” She leaned in until the mesh marked her cheek. “You know who killed that girl.” “I know what ate her.” “Name it.” “It has a dozen and they change with the city. Tonight it buys tincture and teeth where the trains used to stop. Tomorrow the Market moves and you’ll stand in the wrong tunnel with your torch out.” “How long till the full moon?” “Tomorrow,” spoke the man behind the gate before Tomás could. “After that you look in a different place and find a different death.” Quinn breathed in through her nose. The air tasted like a scrapyard hit with lavender and spilled gin. She saw, for a slice of a second, the shadow of stalls beyond the stairs. A slung canopy dripped and winked with beads. Someone hawked a bundle of dried something that sounded too light for wood and too heavy for grass. A boy ran past with vials knocking together in a satchel, and the liquid inside those tiny stomachs glowed faintly, an unhealthy ocean. “You run a butcher’s shop with fancy labels,” her hand stayed on the mesh. “I put on gloves either way.” “Gloves melt down there,” the old man responded. “Bones hold.” Tomás watched her the way a cat watched a door. “You can call this a chase. I call it consent.” “You don’t get that from me.” “I don’t need it. Not tonight.” He started to swing the gate closed. The metal moved like a sigh through a narrow throat. “Tomás,” her voice caught his wrist more than the steel did. “Did you hold her hand?” “I held her face,” he answered without looking away. “I told her to think about the first time she beat her brother in a race. I told her it would hurt and then stop. I told her to bite my palm until the thing let go.” “Did it?” “Not enough.” “You still wear a saint. Where was he?” “In a different story.” The old man watched her watch the gap close. “Token or bone.” “Take my word,” Quinn lifted her badge again, the crest blackened by water. “Let me in as an officer.” “That word weighs nothing in there.” “Then take my watch,” she flicked her wrist, the leather damp and honest. “Take time. Give me the door.” “Your kind always offers time after it runs out.” He placed his palm flat on the grate. It was a farmer’s hand, cracked and familiar with hard things. Quinn mirrored it with her own. Warmth bled into her skin, a pulse that didn’t belong to her. Under their hands, the gate tasted her like breath on a spoon. “It sees you,” the man murmured. “It doesn’t know you.” Tomás stepped back into the stairwell glow. The angles of his face sharpened in it. He looked younger and older all at once. “You want to learn why your partner didn’t come back up? Walk.” “You want to see me put you against a wall after?” Quinn’s jaw set. “Also walk.” “We can share the road.” “We don’t share anything.” Rain thudded on the corrugated roof over the gate, hard enough to lay down a beat. A siren stitched itself short and then unpicked. Somewhere behind her, a drunk whistled three notes and choked on the fourth. Her watch ticked. The city breathed its wet breath. “Make a decision, officer,” the gatekeeper told her, quietly, as if they stood on a church step. “Either your world or this one. The gap narrows with your hesitation.” “You can’t close me out,” she replied, voice steady as a beam. “Not while he’s inside with names in his pocket.” “No,” the man allowed. “But you can close yourself.” Tomás gave a small, loose shrug. “Last chance to keep your shoes clean.” Quinn looked past them into the throat of the stair. The light down there had a colour she didn’t have a name for. A woman’s voice rose and snaked back on itself with laughter that wasn’t kind. A hand-painted sign hung askew: Under the Veil, All Deals Hold. Her fingers clenched on the wire. Her badge gleamed dull. The rain soaked the fabric along her shoulder blades until it clung. Her back felt very straight. “Morris,” she breathed, quietly enough the rain almost took it. “Guide me or shut me down.” Her boot edged toward the gap. The old man’s hand hovered. Tomás’ eyes took her in and offered nothing. “Detective Quinn,” Control finally bled back into her earpiece as a ghost of sound, words warping. “Repeat. Location. Repeat.” She pressed the radio close, the mesh biting her knuckles, the stair yawning like a throat below.