Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYPTJNWMSPR1XD9VW2J636

The rain fell in sheets. Detective Harlow Quinn's boots cratered the puddles on Camden High Street, each impact sending filthy water arching toward her trousers. She ignored the soak creeping up her calves. Her eyes locked on the figure fifty yards ahead—a man in a charcoal coat who moved with the fluidity of mercury, slipping between late-night pedestrians who stumbled from pubs and curry houses. She pumped her arms. The worn leather watch on her left wrist slid toward her elbow, its familiar weight a tether to the eighteen years of service that had carved the sharp lines of her jaw into permanent resolve. Three years since DS Morris had vanished into darkness like this. Three years of case files gathering dust while the department whispered about stress leave and breakdowns. She knew better. She knew the dark had teeth. The green neon of The Raven's Nest had disappeared behind her seven blocks ago. She’d been watching the entrance from a doorway across the street, collar up against the downpour, when the figure emerged. He’d sensed her immediately—she’d seen it in the snap of his head, the tension in his shoulders. Then he’d run. "Metropolitan Police!" Her voice cracked against the wet stone. The suspect cut left. Quinn followed, her military precision calculating the angle of pursuit. She shaved seconds off the corner, boots squeaking against wet pavement. The alley narrowed. Brick walls hemmed them in, graffiti bleeding down the mortar in the downpour. Her salt-and-pepper hair, cropped close to her scalp, offered no resistance to the rain; water rivulets traced the contours of her skull and dripped from her brow. The figure didn't break stride. Instead, he accelerated. His coat flared behind him like wings, and for a moment—just a fraction of a heartbeat—Quinn saw something wrong with his silhouette. Too many angles. Too much shadow clinging to his frame where light should have touched. She pushed harder. Her lungs burned. The scar tissue from last year's stabbing pulled tight across her abdomen, a silvered memory of a Kensington ambush that had never made sense until she'd started connecting the dots. Dots that led here, to Camden, to this chase that had started outside a Soho bar with old maps hanging on its walls. The suspect vaulted a chain-link fence. Quinn grabbed the links, metal biting her palms, and hauled herself over. Her trousers snagged. She ripped them free, landed hard on the other side. Pain spiked through her ankle. She ran through it. They emerged onto a side street deserted except for a single streetlamp buzzing its death throes. The light caught the suspect's profile—olive skin, dark curls plastered to his forehead, a flash of silver at his throat. Saint Christopher. She filed the detail away, another piece for the puzzle she'd been assembling since Morris had whispered "the Veil" into his radio three seconds before static swallowed his voice. He darted toward the mouth of an abandoned Tube station. Quinn's breath hitched. She recognized the architecture—the Edwardian facade, the boarded windows, the ghost of white tiles visible where the plywood had peeled. This station had closed in the seventies, buried under redevelopment plans that never materialized. But the boards over the entrance hung loose tonight. One plank swung on a single nail, creaking in the wind that tunneled down from the High Street. The suspect vanished into the darkness beyond. She reached the entrance thirty seconds later. Her hand found the loose plank. Cold air exhaled from the gap, carrying scents of copper and myrrh and something else—something that smelled like ozone before a lightning strike. Her fingers traced the wood. Splinters bit her skin. Below, she heard footsteps descending. Then voices. Many voices. The susurration of commerce, but wrong somehow. The rhythms didn't match any market she'd ever surveilled. No casual browsing. No laughter. Just urgent whispers and the clink of glass on glass. Quinn checked her watch. The dial glowed 11:47. The full moon hung somewhere above the cloud cover; she could feel its pull in her joints, an ache she'd learned to associate with the strange cases. The ones that ended with reports redacted by men in suits who didn't exist. She peered through the gap. Stairs descended into pitch, broken by intermittent flashes of bioluminescent blue that pulsed against the tile walls. She saw shadows moving—too tall, too angular, wrong proportions that triggered primal alarms in her hindbrain. She saw a woman with serpentine hair haggling over a jar that glowed with imprisoned starlight. She saw a man hand over what looked like a vertebra—white and carved with sigils—to a guard who stepped aside and let him pass. Bone token. Entry requirement. Quinn had none. She had her service weapon, cold and heavy against her ribs. She had eighteen years of instinct. She had the memory of Morris's last transmission playing on loop in her temporal lobe. The rain intensified behind her, drumming a funeral march on the pavement. Water streamed down her face, salt on her lips. She could retreat. Call it in. Wait for backup that would arrive too late, that would find nothing but rats and rust. She could return to her flat in Clapham, pour whiskey into a tumbler, and pretend the world consisted only of what the Metropolitan Police handbook described. Or she could step into the dark. Her hand moved to the loose plank. She pulled. The nail screeched in protest, then surrendered. The opening widened. The scent of the underground rushed up to meet her—ancient and electric and hungry. From below came the bustle of the Veil Market, stripped of humanity. No music. No casual conversation. Just the snap of transactions, the rustle of fabric that sounded too much like scales, the wet clicking of tongues that hadn't spoken English in centuries, or ever. Quinn adjusted her stance. Her sharp jaw tightened. She thought of the case files stacked on her desk, each one marked with Morris's handwriting. She thought of the Saint Christopher medallion she'd found in his locker, still warm when she'd retrieved it, though he'd been missing six hours. She thought of the leather watch on her wrist, ticking away the seconds of her life she'd dedicated to finding truth in a city built on secrets. Her fingers curled around the plank's edge. Splinters bit deep. She didn't flinch. The darkness below shifted. Something with too many joints scuttled across her peripheral vision. The scent of alchemical fires—sulfur and lavender—burned her nostrils. She had no bone token. She had no sanction. She had only the certainty that if she turned back now, she would never learn what had swallowed DS Morris whole, and the next body might be hers. Quinn gripped her service weapon, checked the chamber by feel alone. The metal was cold. Real. Grounding. Below, the suspect's footsteps faded into the cacophony of the Market. Soon, he would be gone. The trail would vanish like Morris had vanished. She pulled the plank wider. The gap gaped, dark and inviting as a grave. She stepped forward.