Run: 2026-02-20-01KHXQ4NBFK8JGCBRVJG82DA0V

Rain hammered the pavement, each drop exploding into tiny crowns of silver under the flickering streetlamps. Harlow Quinn didn’t flinch. Her breath came steady, measured, as she rounded the corner of Greek Street, boots splashing through puddles deep enough to soak her ankles. The suspect—tall, lanky, dressed in a hooded jacket that flapped like a crow’s wings—ducked left, disappearing into the maze of Soho’s back alleys. She followed. The alley reeked of damp cardboard and stale beer, the brick walls slick with moisture. A fire escape groaned overhead, its rusted metal shuddering in the wind. Harlow’s fingers brushed the grip of her service weapon, but she didn’t draw. Not yet. The suspect was fast, but she was relentless, her stride eating up the distance between them. He glanced back once—just a flash of pale face under the hood—and his boot caught a loose cobblestone. He stumbled, recovered, then veered sharp right into a narrow passage barely wide enough for a person. Harlow didn’t hesitate. She took the turn at a sprint, shoulder grazing the wall. The passage dead-ended at a rusted metal door, its paint peeling like sunburnt skin. The suspect wrenched it open and vanished inside. She reached for the handle—cold, slick—and yanked. It didn’t budge. Locking mechanism. She exhaled through her nose, rolled her shoulders, and drove her boot into the door just above the handle. The metal screamed, the lock gave, and the door swung inward with a groan. Darkness yawned beyond it, the air thick with the scent of wet earth and something older, something metallic and faintly electric. A staircase descended into black. Harlow pulled her torch from her belt, flicked it on. The beam cut through the gloom, illuminating steps slick with moisture, the walls lined with pipes that dripped like sweating skin. She descended, one hand on the rail, the other keeping the torch steady. The suspect’s footsteps echoed ahead, rapid, panicked. The stairs bottomed out in a tunnel, its arched ceiling lost in shadow. The walls were lined with graffiti—symbols, not tags. Twisted sigils, some fresh, some so old the paint had bled into the stone. Harlow’s torchlight lingered on one: a serpent coiled around a dagger, its fangs buried in the blade. She knew that mark. DS Morris had scribbled something like it in his notebook the week before he died. A sound snapped her focus back—the suspect, cursing under his breath as he fumbled with something at the far end of the tunnel. Harlow advanced, torch beam jittering over the uneven ground. The tunnel opened into a cavernous space, the air suddenly warmer, thick with the scent of incense and burning oil. Light. Not the sickly yellow of streetlamps, but a shifting, flickering glow—lanterns, dozens of them, hanging from chains bolted into the ceiling. Their flames burned blue, green, violet, casting long shadows over the stalls that cluttered the space. The Veil Market. The suspect—no, not just a suspect, a *runner*—ducked behind a stall draped in black velvet, its shelves lined with jars of things that pulsed faintly, like hearts in brine. Harlow stepped forward, boots crunching on something brittle. She looked down. Bones. Small ones, scattered like dice across the threshold. A voice, smooth as oil, slid out of the dark to her left. “Lost, love?” She turned. A woman leaned against a stall, her face half-hidden by a hooded cloak, her fingers toying with a string of teeth strung around her neck. Not human teeth. Too sharp. Too many. Harlow ignored her, eyes scanning the market. The runner was gone. The woman chuckled, a wet, clicking sound. “First time at the Veil? You’re either very brave or very stupid.” “Third option.” Harlow’s voice was steel. “I’m a detective.” That got a reaction. The woman’s fingers stilled. The market’s low hum of bartering and murmured deals faltered, just for a second. Then, like a held breath released, it resumed. The woman pushed off the stall, her cloak whispering against the ground. “Then you’re *definitely* stupid.” She gestured to the bones under Harlow’s boots. “That’s the entry fee. You didn’t pay.” Harlow didn’t look down. “I’m not here to shop.” “No?” The woman tilted her head, the lantern light catching the irises of her eyes—vertical pupils, black as oil slicks. “Then why *are* you here, Detective?” Harlow’s jaw tightened. The runner had vanished into the market’s labyrinth of stalls, but she could still hear him, the faint scuffle of his boots, the rasp of his breath. She could chase him deeper, into the belly of this place where the rules bent and the air tasted like copper. Or she could turn back, call for backup, and come at this with a team, a warrant, a *plan*. But backup wouldn’t get here in time. And warrants didn’t mean shit in a place like this. She met the woman’s gaze. “I’m following a lead.” The woman’s lips curled. “Aren’t we all.” She reached into her cloak and tossed something at Harlow’s feet. A bone token, carved with the same serpent-and-dagger sigil from the tunnel wall. “For the road toll. But mind you don’t linger, Detective. The Veil’s got teeth.” Harlow didn’t pick it up. “Where’d he go?” The woman’s smile widened, revealing teeth filed to points. “Who?” “The runner. Tall, hooded jacket, looks like he’s shitting himself.” A laugh, low and throaty. “Oh, *him*.” She jerked her chin toward a narrow gap between two stalls, one selling vials of something that writhed like smoke, the other displaying a collection of knives with blades that seemed to drink the light. “Down the Rat’s Maw. But you’ll want to hurry.” She leaned in, her breath hot against Harlow’s ear. “Some things in here *like* lost cops.” Harlow didn’t flinch. She stepped over the bones, her torch beam cutting a path through the market’s gloom. The gap—the Rat’s Maw—was barely wide enough for her shoulders, the walls lined with more of those sigils, their paint fresh, wet. She slid through, the velvet drapes of the stalls brushing against her like grasping fingers. The tunnel beyond sloped downward, the air growing thicker, heavier. The sound of dripping water echoed, but it wasn’t water. The walls wept something darker, something that glistened like oil in her torchlight. Her boots stuck slightly with each step, the soles making a wet, sucking sound. A scream tore through the dark ahead. Not the runner. This was raw, guttural, cut short with a wet *thunk*. Harlow’s grip tightened on her torch. She drew her weapon, the slide clicking back with a sound that seemed too loud in the suffocating quiet. The tunnel opened into a chamber, its ceiling lost in shadow. The runner stood in the centre, his hood thrown back, his face gaunt under the sickly glow of a single lantern. His hands were raised, trembling, as something moved in the dark behind him. Something with too many limbs. Harlow’s torchlight flickered over it—a mass of glistening black, chitinous, its body a writhing knot of segmented parts. Its head—if it *had* a head—was a cluster of eyes, wet and reflecting, and a mouth that split open vertically, rows of needle teeth glinting. The runner saw her. His lips moved, forming a single word: *“Help.”* The thing behind him *clicked*, a sound like a thousand nails scraping stone. Harlow didn’t lower her gun. But she didn’t fire. Because the runner wasn’t just running from *her*. And whatever was in this chamber with them wasn’t for sale.