Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMMGA0916GHBBTE80B99AXM

The abandoned Tube station smelled of damp concrete and something older, something like rust and burnt copper. Detective Harlow Quinn stepped off the last rung of the maintenance ladder and onto the platform, her boots scuffing against the cracked tiles. The air was thick with the hum of portable floodlights, their harsh glow casting long shadows across the peeling posters of 1970s rock bands. She adjusted the worn leather watch on her wrist, its strap creaking with the movement, and took in the scene. A uniformed officer stood near the edge of the platform, his face pale under the artificial light. He nodded at her as she approached. "Detective Quinn. Down here." Quinn didn’t return the nod. Her sharp jaw tightened as she took in the body sprawled across the tracks. A man, mid-thirties, dressed in a rumpled suit that had seen better days. His limbs were splayed at unnatural angles, as if he’d been dropped from a great height. But it was his face that made her stomach clench. His eyes were wide, frozen in terror, and his mouth was stretched into a silent scream. Not the usual pallor of death—this was something else. "Who called it in?" she asked, her voice low. "Anonymous tip. Came through the station’s old emergency line. Dispatch traced it to a payphone near King’s Cross, but by the time we got there, the caller was gone." Quinn crouched beside the body, her knees popping. She pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from her pocket and snapped them on. The victim’s fingers were curled into claws, the nails broken and caked with dirt. She lifted one hand gently, turning it over. No defensive wounds. No signs of a struggle. Just that look of sheer, unadulterated horror. "Time of death?" she asked. "ME’s on her way, but preliminary estimate is between midnight and two a.m.," the officer said. "No ID on the body yet." Quinn stood, her gaze sweeping over the tracks. The station was supposed to be sealed off, part of the old Northern Line that had been decommissioned decades ago. The entrance was boarded up, the turnstiles rusted shut. But the crime scene tape fluttering in the stale air told a different story. Someone had been here. Someone who knew how to get in. "Detective." She turned. DS Priya Kapoor stood at the far end of the platform, her dark eyes scanning the scene with the same intensity Quinn felt in her own gut. Kapoor was new to the team, transferred from Manchester six months ago, but she had a sharp mind and a knack for noticing the things others missed. "Priya," Quinn acknowledged. "What’ve you got?" Kapoor stepped closer, her boots silent on the tiles. "No signs of forced entry. The boards over the entrance were intact when uniforms arrived. No footprints in the dust on the platform, either." She gestured to the ground. "Except for ours." Quinn frowned. "That’s impossible. He didn’t just materialize down here." "Agreed. But look at this." Kapoor led her to the edge of the platform, where a narrow service tunnel branched off into darkness. She shone her torch inside. The beam caught something glinting on the ground—a small, brass object half-buried in the dirt. Quinn crouched again, brushing the grime away with her gloved fingers. It was a compass, its casing etched with strange symbols that made her skin prickle. The needle wasn’t pointing north. It was spinning wildly, as if caught in some invisible current. "Where the hell did this come from?" she muttered. Kapoor crossed her arms. "Maybe the victim had it on him. Maybe it’s a clue." Quinn turned the compass over in her hand. The brass was cold, despite the stuffy air of the tunnel. The symbols weren’t just decorative—they looked like wards. Protective sigils. She’d seen enough weird shit in her career to know when something wasn’t right. And this? This was *wrong*. She stood abruptly, pocketing the compass. "We need to canvass the area. Someone had to have seen something. This station’s not exactly invisible." Kapoor hesitated. "Quinn, you’re not thinking this is... I don’t know, *supernatural*?" Quinn shot her a look. "I’m thinking this is a homicide. And right now, the only thing that makes sense is that our victim came down here willingly. Or he was brought here. Either way, someone knew about this place." She glanced at the compass in her palm. "And someone knew about *this*." Kapoor exhaled sharply. "You really think this is connected to the other cases?" Quinn didn’t answer. The other cases. The ones that had started cropping up six months ago—bodies found in abandoned buildings, in sealed-off alleys, in places that shouldn’t have been accessible. All of them with the same look of terror on their faces. All of them with no signs of forced entry. No witnesses. No leads. And then there was Morris. Her partner’s face flashed in her mind—his easy grin, the way he’d always had a pack of gum in his pocket, the way he’d looked the last time she’d seen him, standing in the doorway of that derelict church, telling her to wait outside. *Just for a minute, Quinn. I’ll be right back.* She hadn’t waited. And he hadn’t come back. Quinn shook the memory away. "We treat this like any other case. We follow the evidence." Kapoor nodded, but her expression was skeptical. "And the compass?" Quinn tucked it deeper into her pocket. "I’ll take it to the lab. See if they can tell us what the hell it is." --- The ME arrived an hour later, her team wheeling in a gurney with practiced efficiency. Dr. Elena Vasquez was a no-nonsense woman in her fifties, her dark hair streaked with silver and pulled into a tight bun. She crouched beside the body, her gloved hands moving with precision as she examined the victim’s wounds. "Lividity suggests he was moved post-mortem," she said, her voice clipped. "But the bruising on his arms—see here?—looks like he was restrained. Not by handcuffs. Something... smoother. Like rope, but without the texture." Quinn folded her arms. "Cause of death?" Vasquez hesitated. "I won’t know for sure until I get him on the table, but..." She peeled back the victim’s collar, revealing a series of dark, vein-like marks spreading up his neck. "These aren’t bruises. They look like... burns. But not from fire. More like... corrosion." Quinn’s stomach twisted. "Corrosion?" Vasquez stood, stripping off her gloves. "I’ll run tox screens, but I’ve seen this before. Three years ago. Your partner’s case." Quinn’s breath caught. Morris. His body had been found in that church, his skin marked with the same dark veins, his face frozen in the same silent scream. She turned away, her fingers curling into fists. Kapoor was watching her, her expression unreadable. "Quinn," Kapoor said quietly. "We need to talk about this." Quinn didn’t answer. She was staring at the compass in her hand, the needle still spinning lazily, as if drawn to something just out of sight. And then she saw it. A shadow moving at the edge of the platform. Not a shadow—*the* shadow. A flicker of something darker than the surrounding gloom, something that didn’t belong. It darted into the service tunnel, vanishing before she could get a proper look. Quinn was moving before she realized it, her boots pounding against the tiles as she sprinted toward the tunnel. The beam of her torch cut through the darkness, illuminating the crumbling brick walls, the rusted pipes, the thick layer of dust on the ground. And then she saw the footprints. Fresh. Small. Like someone had been standing here, watching. Watching *her*. She followed them deeper into the tunnel, her pulse hammering in her throat. The air grew colder, the silence heavier. The compass in her pocket burned against her thigh, the needle now still, pointing straight ahead. At the end of the tunnel, the footprints stopped. And there, scrawled in what looked like dried blood on the wall, were three words: *Find the Veil.*