Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMNDWSQ42CDMVCNZ4C0C8JA

The abandoned Tube station stank of damp concrete and rust, the kind of smell that clung to the back of your throat like a bad memory. Detective Harlow Quinn stepped over the police tape, her boots scuffing against the cracked tile of what had once been Camden Town station. The air was thick with the hum of generators and the low murmur of forensics teams, but beneath it all, something else thrummed—a wrongness, like a finger dragged down a chalkboard. She adjusted the worn leather watch on her left wrist, its strap loose enough to slide when she flexed her fingers. The station’s overhead lights flickered, casting long shadows that pooled in the corners like spilled ink. Quinn had seen plenty of crime scenes in her eighteen years on the force, but this one made the hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention. “You’re late.” Quinn turned. DS Patel stood near the edge of the platform, arms crossed, his dark eyes sharp beneath the brim of his cap. He jerked his chin toward the body sprawled across the tracks. “Thought you’d want to see this before the suits from the Yard start mucking it up.” Quinn stepped closer, her gaze sweeping over the scene. The victim—a man in his thirties, dressed in a rumpled suit—lay face-up, his limbs splayed at unnatural angles. No blood. No visible wounds. Just a man who looked like he’d decided to take a nap on the tracks and never woken up. “Cause of death?” she asked. Patel shrugged. “Coroner’s on his way, but my money’s on heart attack. Guy’s got the build of someone who skipped leg day for a decade.” Quinn crouched, her knees popping. She ignored the twinge in her bad hip—the one that acted up when it rained, or when she spent too long standing over a corpse. The victim’s skin was pale, almost waxy, but it was his expression that caught her attention. His mouth was open, lips parted as if he’d been mid-sentence when whatever killed him had struck. His eyes were wide, unblinking, fixed on something just beyond the station’s crumbling ceiling. “Look at his hands,” Quinn said. Patel frowned. “What about them?” She pointed. The man’s fingers were curled inward, not in the stiff rigor of death, but like he’d been clutching something. Something small. Something that wasn’t there anymore. “He’s holding air,” Quinn said. Patel exhaled through his nose. “Or he was holding his chest before he keeled over. Classic heart attack pose.” Quinn didn’t answer. She stood, brushing dust from her trousers, and scanned the platform. The station was a relic—peeling paint, graffiti-scrawled walls, a ticket booth with its glass long shattered. But there, near the edge of the platform, something glinted under the harsh glow of the floodlights. She stepped closer. A small brass compass, its casing tarnished with verdigris, lay half-hidden beneath a discarded newspaper. The needle spun lazily, as if unsure which way to point. Quinn’s pulse kicked up a notch. She knew this compass. She’d seen one just like it three years ago, in the hands of a man who’d claimed to be a “collector of rare artifacts.” A man who’d died in an alleyway not far from here, his body contorted in the same way as the victim on the tracks. No blood. No wounds. Just a man who’d looked like he’d seen something impossible right before he died. Quinn reached into her pocket and pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves. She picked up the compass, turning it over in her palm. The face was etched with strange symbols—sigils, maybe, or some kind of arcane script. She didn’t recognize them, but she knew someone who might. “You’re not seriously picking that up, are you?” Patel said. “That’s evidence.” Quinn ignored him. She slipped the compass into her coat pocket. “Where’s the CCTV?” Patel gestured toward the ceiling. “Non-functional. Hasn’t worked in years.” “Convenient.” “Or just shitty infrastructure.” Patel rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, Quinn, I get it. This is weird. But weird doesn’t mean supernatural. Guy probably had a heart attack, dropped his weird little trinket, and that’s that.” Quinn didn’t answer. She was too busy staring at the wall behind the ticket booth. The graffiti there was fresh—still glistening under the lights. A series of symbols, hastily scrawled in what looked like blood. She didn’t recognize the language, but she recognized the shape of them. A warning. Or an invitation. “You see this?” she asked. Patel followed her gaze. “Kids. Probably some kind of gang tag.” Quinn stepped closer. The symbols weren’t random. They were deliberate. Precise. And they matched the ones on the compass. Her radio crackled. “Detective Quinn, you there?” She unclipped it from her belt. “Quinn here.” “Got a witness for you. Says she saw the victim right before he died. She’s in the back of the squad car.” Quinn exchanged a glance with Patel. “On my way.” The witness was a young woman with curly red hair and round glasses, her freckled face pale beneath the glare of the squad car’s interior light. She clutched a worn leather satchel in her lap, her fingers digging into the straps like she was trying to anchor herself. Quinn slid into the seat beside her. “I’m Detective Quinn. You saw what happened?” The woman nodded, her throat working. “I—I was on my way home. Late shift at the museum. I saw him standing near the edge of the platform. He looked… lost. Like he didn’t know where he was.” Quinn’s gaze flicked to the woman’s satchel. The British Museum’s logo was stamped on the flap. “What’s your name?” “Eva. Eva Kowalski.” “You work in the restricted archives, don’t you, Eva?” Eva’s eyes widened. “How did you—?” Quinn ignored the question. “Did you see anyone else with the victim?” Eva hesitated. “No. But…” She trailed off, tucking a strand of hair behind her left ear—a nervous habit, Quinn noted. “There was something else. A sound. Like… like static. And then he just… fell.” Quinn leaned in. “Did he say anything?” Eva’s fingers tightened on her satchel. “He said, ‘It’s not supposed to be here.’” Quinn’s breath caught. Three years ago, her partner, DS Morris, had said the exact same thing right before he died. Right before his body had been found twisted in a way that no living person’s should. She pulled the compass from her pocket and held it up. “You recognize this?” Eva’s face went slack. “Where did you get that?” “It was near the body. What is it?” Eva swallowed. “It’s a Veil Compass. It points toward… toward rifts. Portals. Places where the boundary between our world and others is thin.” Quinn’s pulse hammered in her ears. “And where would it be pointing now?” Eva’s gaze flicked to the compass. The needle spun wildly, then stilled, pointing toward the far end of the platform. Toward the darkness beyond the reach of the floodlights. Quinn’s radio crackled again. “Quinn, we’ve got another one.” She didn’t take her eyes off Eva. “Another what?” “Another body. Same MO. Found near the old service tunnels.” Quinn’s stomach twisted. She knew those tunnels. They ran beneath the city like veins, dark and winding and full of things that didn’t have names. She clipped the radio back to her belt. “Stay here.” Eva grabbed her wrist. “Detective, wait. You don’t understand what you’re dealing with.” Quinn met her gaze. “Then explain it to me.” Eva’s grip tightened. “That compass doesn’t just point to rifts. It *opens* them. And whatever’s on the other side… it’s not friendly.” Quinn pulled her wrist free. “Then I guess I’d better make sure it stays closed.” She stepped out of the squad car, the weight of the compass heavy in her pocket. Patel was waiting for her, his expression grim. “You buying any of this?” he asked. Quinn didn’t answer. She was too busy staring at the darkness at the end of the platform, where the needle of the compass had pointed. Somewhere in the shadows, something was waiting. And it had already killed twice.