Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYD22HFTMWEZP5Z55G7C39

The rain hammered down on Harlow Quinn's shoulders as she rounded the corner onto Camden High Street, her boots slapping against slick pavement. Thirty meters ahead, Tomás Herrera's dark jacket disappeared into the crowd of late-night stragglers huddled under awnings and umbrellas. "Stop! Police!" He didn't stop. They never did. Quinn pushed through a cluster of teenagers sharing a cigarette, ignoring their protests as she knocked the smoke from someone's hand. Her lungs burned—eighteen years on the force and she still couldn't outrun a twenty-nine-year-old with paramedic training. The wet air tasted like exhaust and desperation. Herrera glanced back, his face pale under the sodium streetlights, that Saint Christopher medallion catching the glow for just a moment before he ducked left into a narrow alley between a tattoo parlor and a kebab shop. She followed. The alley stank of rotting garbage and stale beer. Quinn's hand found her torch, the beam cutting through the darkness to illuminate graffiti-covered walls and overflowing bins. No sign of him. The alley dead-ended twenty meters ahead at a brick wall tagged with something that looked like Latin. "Herrera!" Her voice echoed off the close walls. "I just want to talk. About the Whitmore case. About what you saw that night." Nothing. Rain dripped from a fire escape above, plinking against metal. Quinn moved forward, sweeping her torch across doorways and shadows. Her other hand rested on her baton—she'd left her Taser in the car, hadn't expected a foot chase when she'd spotted Herrera leaving the Raven's Nest an hour ago. She'd only wanted to ask questions about the body they'd found in Highgate Cemetery, the one with the strange symbols carved into its chest. The one that reminded her too much of Morris. A scraping sound. Metal on stone. She whipped around. Behind a dumpster, a rusted grate had been pulled aside, revealing a dark hole in the ground. The opening was barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through, and a ladder descended into blackness. Quinn crouched at the edge, shining her torch down. The beam didn't reach the bottom. Old brick walls, slick with moisture and something that might have been moss—or might not. The smell that wafted up was wrong. Not sewage, not the musty decay of abandoned tunnels. Something sweeter. Incense, maybe. And underneath it, something older. She pulled out her radio. Static. Tried her phone. No signal. "Damn it." Procedure said call for backup. Procedure said secure the perimeter and wait. Procedure said a lot of things that didn't account for three years of dead ends and cold cases and the look on Morris's face in those last moments, when he'd seen something that Quinn still couldn't explain. Herrera knew something. She'd seen it in his eyes at the Raven's Nest, the way he'd gone pale when she'd mentioned the symbols. The way he'd run. Quinn checked her watch—the worn leather band was damp against her wrist, the face reading 11:47 PM. She had maybe six hours before dawn, before the day shift started asking questions about why she was pursuing unauthorized leads on her own time again. She started down the ladder. The rungs were slippery and the descent seemed to go on forever, her torch clenched between her teeth as she climbed. Fifty rungs. Sixty. The sounds of the city above faded until all she could hear was her own breathing and the distant drip of water. When her boots finally hit solid ground, Quinn found herself in a tunnel that shouldn't exist. The walls were lined with old Underground tiles—white with a green border—but the station name had been scratched away, replaced with symbols she didn't recognize. Gas lamps flickered in brackets along the walls, casting dancing shadows, though she couldn't see any gas lines. Ahead, the tunnel opened into something larger. Light spilled from around a corner, accompanied by the murmur of voices and what sounded like a marketplace. Haggling. Laughter. The clink of coins. Quinn drew her baton and moved forward, pressing her back against the wall as she approached the opening. What she saw made her stop breathing. The abandoned Tube station had been transformed into a bazaar straight out of a fever dream. Stalls crowded the platform, draped in fabrics that shimmered with colors she couldn't name. Vendors called out in languages she didn't recognize, selling goods displayed under lights that cast no shadows. A woman with too many fingers arranged bottles of liquid that glowed faintly blue. A man with skin like bark haggled over what looked like a human tooth the size of her fist. And everywhere, people. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, moving through the market with the casual ease of regular customers. Some looked normal—hoodies and jeans, shopping bags and umbrellas. Others didn't look human at all. Quinn pressed deeper into the shadows, her heart hammering against her ribs. This wasn't possible. This couldn't be real. But she'd thought the same thing three years ago, standing over Morris's body, looking at wounds that no weapon she knew could have made. She spotted Herrera near a stall selling maps that seemed to move when she looked at them directly. He was talking to an old woman wrapped in shawls, his hands gesturing urgently. The scar on his left forearm caught the strange light as he reached into his jacket and pulled out something small—a bone, yellowed with age, carved with tiny markings. The old woman took it, examined it, nodded. She handed him a leather pouch in exchange. Quinn's jaw tightened. Whatever this place was, whatever Herrera was involved in, it connected to the body in Highgate. To Morris. To three years of questions without answers. She stepped out of the shadows. The reaction was immediate. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. The woman with too many fingers froze mid-motion, her eyes—all four of them—fixing on Quinn with something between surprise and hunger. "Police," Quinn said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. "Nobody move." Laughter rippled through the crowd. Not mocking, exactly. More like the sound adults make when a child says something unintentionally amusing. Herrera's face went white. "Detective, you shouldn't be here." "Neither should you." She advanced toward him, baton raised. "Tomás Herrera, I need you to come with me. We can talk about this somewhere—" "You don't understand." He backed away, bumping into the map stall. The vendor hissed something in a language that sounded like wind through dead leaves. "You can't be here. You don't have a token. They'll—" "They'll what?" The crowd had started to close in. Quinn turned, trying to keep her back to a wall, but there were no walls anymore—just bodies pressing closer, faces that weren't quite faces, eyes that reflected light in ways that human eyes shouldn't. "She smells like iron," someone said. A woman's voice, melodic and cold. "And grief. Old grief, carried close." "Fresh meat," another voice added. "Been a while since we had uninvited law." Quinn's grip tightened on her baton. "Stay back. All of you." "Detective." Herrera pushed through the crowd, his hands raised. "Please. Listen to me. This place—the Veil Market—it has rules. You came without a bone token. Without invitation. They have rights here that your laws don't recognize." "I don't care about their bloody rules." "You should." His voice cracked. "I've seen what happens to people who break them." The crowd parted. A figure emerged from the throng—tall, thin, wearing a suit that might have been fashionable a century ago. Its face was wrong, features slightly too symmetrical, eyes too deep-set, mouth curved in a smile that showed too many teeth. "Detective Harlow Quinn," it said. Her name in its mouth sounded like a sentence being passed. "Eighteen years of service. Lost partner, DS Thomas Morris, three years past. Cause of death listed as unknown trauma. The truth, of course, is rather more complicated." Quinn's blood ran cold. "How do you know that?" "Information is currency here, Detective. And you—" The figure tilted its head at an angle that no human neck should allow. "—you are standing in my market, in my domain, without payment or permission. That makes you either very brave or very foolish." "I'm pursuing a suspect." "Mr. Herrera is a valued customer. Whatever disputes you have with him in the world above, they hold no weight down here." The figure's smile widened. "However. I am not unreasonable. You came seeking answers. That much is written in the lines of your face, the tension in your shoulders. You want to know what killed your partner. What left those marks on the Highgate corpse. What hides in the shadows of your city." Quinn said nothing. Her throat had gone dry. "I can give you those answers. For a price." "I don't make deals with—" She stopped. With what? She didn't even know what this thing was. "With creatures like me?" The figure laughed, a sound like glass breaking. "You already have, Detective. Every time you looked the other way when a case didn't make sense. Every time you filed an incomplete report because the truth was too strange. Every time you told yourself there must be a rational explanation." It leaned closer, and Quinn caught a scent like old books and copper. "The bargain has already begun. The only question is how far you're willing to go to see it through." Behind her, Herrera made a small sound of distress. "Detective, don't. Whatever it offers, the price is always more than you think." Quinn's mind raced. She could try to fight her way out. Probably die in the attempt—she was outnumbered a hundred to one by things she couldn't even name. She could agree to whatever terms this creature offered and deal with the consequences later. Or she could retreat. Climb back up that ladder, file a report that no one would believe, and spend another three years chasing shadows. Morris's face flashed through her memory. The fear in his eyes. The way he'd grabbed her arm and tried to say something, tried to warn her, before the light went out of him entirely. "What's the price?" she heard herself ask. The figure's smile became something almost genuine. Almost warm. "A question for a question, Detective. The traditional currency of those who deal in truth." It gestured expansively at the market around them. "Ask me what killed Thomas Morris. In exchange, you will answer one question of mine, honestly and completely." "And if I don't like your question?" "Then you don't receive your answer. You leave this place unharmed—I am not in the business of damaging potential future customers—and you continue your life of comfortable ignorance." The figure spread its hands. "The choice, as they say, is yours." Rain dripped somewhere in the darkness above. The market had gone quiet, every eye and not-quite-eye fixed on Quinn. She thought about procedure. About backup that wasn't coming. About eighteen years of playing by rules that had never once explained the inexplicable. "One question," she said. Herrera made a noise like a wounded animal. The crowd leaned in. The figure's teeth gleamed. "Detective Harlow Quinn," it said, savoring each syllable. "We have a deal."