Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYTN8ZMFK4XAAKPJB7ZQC4

Rain hammered the pavement, turning the London street into a river of reflected neon. Harlow Quinn's boots struck the wet cobblestones, each impact sending spray up to her ankles. The suspect—dark jacket, hood pulled low—tore through a gap between two kebab shops, and Quinn followed without breaking stride. Sixteen years on the force had taught her how to read a runner. This one knew the terrain, knew which alleyways connected and which dead-ended into brick walls. He'd anticipated her route before she'd chosen it. "Stop! Police!" The figure didn't even glance back. Just pushed harder, weaving between dumpsters and stacked crates with the confidence of someone walking to their own front door. Quinn's lungs burned. Three weeks of paperwork had softened her edge, and she felt it now in the way her legs protested each sprint. The worn leather watch on her left wrist jolted against her wrist bone with every pump of her arm. She ignored it. Focused on the back of that hood, the splash of footsteps ahead. They burst onto Chalk Farm Road together—her quarry first, then Quinn half a second later. Late-night traffic swished past. A black cab's headlights carved through the downpour. The suspect dodged between a bus and a parked delivery van, vanishing toward the old Tube station entrance. Quinn didn't hesitate. She barrelled into the road. Horns blared. Tyres screeched against wet tarmac. "Get out of the—" Someone's curse dissolved into the noise of the storm. The station entrance gaped like a wound in the pavement. The yellow signage had faded to illegibility, and construction barriers blocked the main turnstiles. But the suspect had already slipped through a gap where the boarding had been pried loose, just enough for a body to squeeze through. Quinn's torch beam cut through the darkness as she descended the broken escalator. Water dripped somewhere ahead, a rhythmic plink-plink-plink that echoed off tiles. The air changed as she went deeper—warmer, thicker, carrying an undertone of something metallic and something else she couldn't name. Her radio crackled. Static. Then nothing. She pulled it from her shoulder, tapped it twice. Dead air. The platform stretched before her, empty and silent. Advertising posters from another decade peeled from the walls, promoting concerts and West End shows that had long since closed. Her torch swept left, right, catching glimpses of graffiti and the glint of broken glass. A sound. Footsteps, but wrong somehow—too light, too quick, like they weren't quite touching the ground. Quinn moved forward, staying close to the wall. Her free hand rested on her hip, near the weight of her service weapon. She hadn't drawn it yet. Something told her that down here, it might not matter. "You're making a mistake." The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Quinn spun, torch cutting arcs through the darkness. "Come out. Now." A laugh. Soft, almost gentle. "You don't even know where 'out' is, Detective." The suspect stepped into her light. But he wasn't running anymore. He stood at the far end of the platform, right where the tunnel mouth opened into blackness, and he was smiling. "I told you to stop." "And I told you you're making a mistake." He tilted his head. Water dripped from his hood, but his face remained shadowed. "The Market isn't for your kind." "What market?" The smile widened. "Go home, Detective. Forget tonight. Forget the chase. Forget you ever saw me." "I don't forget." "No. I didn't think you would." He reached into his jacket, and Quinn's hand moved to her weapon. But he only withdrew something small and white, holding it up between two fingers. A bone. Carved into the shape of a token. "This is your one chance. Walk away." "Or what?" The tunnel behind him flickered. Not with light—with something else. Colour that had no name bled through the darkness, and Quinn felt her stomach lurch as reality seemed to fold at the edges. "Or you'll see things you can't unsee." He tucked the token away. "And they'll see you too." He stepped backward into the tunnel, and the darkness swallowed him whole. Not gradually—instantly. One moment he was there, the next, gone. As if the air itself had opened up and closed around him. Quinn stood alone on the platform. Rain drummed above her head, muffled now by layers of concrete and earth. Her torch beam reached into the tunnel mouth and found nothing but tracks and shadow. Her heartbeat counted off the seconds. One. Two. Three. Morris had chased someone through these same kind of shadows, three years ago. Had stood at the edge of something he didn't understand, same as she did now. And Morris had stepped forward. They'd found his body three days later. No marks. No wounds. Just an expression of absolute terror frozen on his face, his eyes wide and fixed on something no one else could see. Quinn touched the watch on her wrist. The leather was soft from years of handling, worn smooth at the edges. Morris had given it to her on her first day as his partner. 'So you'll always know when it's time to go home,' he'd said. The deadline on her current case was forty-eight hours. A missing persons report that had turned into something else, something with threads leading to half a dozen other disappearances. All of them connected to this area. All of them connected to people who'd vanished near abandoned stations, forgotten tunnels, places the city had tried to bury. Her quarry was gone. She could climb back up to the street, call in support, wait for backup. Do everything by the book, the way the department expected. The tunnel flickered again. That same impossible colour, bleeding through the edges of the world. Quinn thought of Morris. Thought of the look on his face when they'd found him. Thought of the reports she'd filed that no one had read, the questions she'd asked that no one had answered. She stepped forward. The darkness parted like a curtain.