Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQF0N5PCZ49MSHC7X693D5

The air in the abandoned Tube station hung thick with damp and something else—something metallic, electric at the back of the throat. Detective Harlow Quinn stepped off the last broken riser of the concrete stairs, her polished brogues meeting a platform littered with fallen tiles and the ghostly remnants of 1970s signage. Her left hand twitched toward her watch—its familiar weight a silent tick against her wrist—but she caught herself, jaw tightening. No time for doubt. Not here. This wasn’t just another derelict London underpass. This was the Veil Market. Official files didn’t name this place. No jurisdiction logged it. But Quinn had been watching it for months—rumblings in missing persons reports, odd energy surges near closed tunnels, and whispers of a place that only opened when the moon bled white through cloud cover. And tonight, two paramedics lay unconscious on the soiled tile, their ambulance parked askew on the upper street, sirens dead. No visible wounds. No toxins in system according to preliminary field scans. Just… nothing. As if their minds had been erased mid-breath. She scanned the platform. Flickering torchlight from a gas burner near a boarded-up ticket booth cast long, twitching shadows. A single bone token—the entry requirement, she’d learned from intercepted occult chatter—lay crushed near the tracks, half-submerged in oily runoff. The scent of burnt sage and old iron clung to the walls. “Detective Quinn.” A voice, low and tense, came from the archway ahead. Quinn turned. Eva Kowalski stood beneath crumbling mosaics of daffodils and red buses, her red curls escaping a half-hearted bun. Round glasses slid down her nose. She wore a worn leather satchel slung across her chest, its buckles straining under the weight of books and notebooks. She looked out of place—too young, too academic—but Quinn had read her file. Research assistant at the British Museum’s restricted archives. Oxford. Occult history. Connected. Still, Quinn’s spine stiffened. Civilians didn’t belong here. Especially not ones with Aurora Kowalski’s sister. “What are you doing down here, Miss Kowalski?” Quinn kept her tone flat, controlled. Eva hesitated, then stepped forward, tucking a curl behind her left ear—her tell. “I felt it. The shift. I’ve been monitoring spatial disturbances in the ley lines beneath North London. This station was a known convergence point. When I heard about the callouts—unresponsive medical teams—I came to investigate.” “Investigate?” Quinn’s brow arched. “This is a crime scene.” “And I’m not here to obstruct,” Eva said, lifting her chin. “But you won’t understand what happened unless you see it through the right lens.” Quinn studied her. Eva’s green eyes didn’t waver. Freckles stood sharp in the dim light. She carried herself like someone used to being dismissed. But there was steel in her voice. “I’m listening,” Quinn said. Eva exhaled. “Your men didn’t go unconscious. They were *pushed*.” “Pushed?” “From *inside*.” She pointed to the paramedics. “Look at the dilation patterns. Equal, unresponsive, but breathing normal. No trauma. No drugs. That’s not neurological collapse. That’s psychic displacement. Something on the other side of a rift forced their consciousnesses back.” Quinn frowned. “Rift?” Eva pulled a small, battered journal from her satchel and flipped to a page inked with spirals and Enochian script. “A tear between planes. Temporary, but powerful. The Veil Market’s presence strains local metaphysics. When it opens, weak spots form—places where the real world thins. Tonight, one opened right here. Big enough to let something through.” Quinn crouched beside one of the paramedics. She checked the man’s pulse, then his pupils. All as Eva described. She reached into her coat, retrieved a penlight, and swept the area. Near the tracks, something glinted. She stood, walked forward. A small brass compass lay half-buried in grime. She pulled a glove from her pocket and picked it up. The casing was etched with sigils she didn’t recognize. Verdigris coated one side like ancient breath. But the needle—thin, silver—trembled violently, not settling north, but jerking toward the east wall, where a section of tiling bulged unnaturally outward, as if the bricks behind it were breathing. “This yours?” she asked, holding it up. Eva’s eyes widened. “That’s a Veil Compass. Shade-made. It detects rifts.” “And this one’s pointing at the wall.” “Because there’s one behind it.” Eva stepped closer. “But it’s unstable. Probably closing. If it snaps shut while someone’s halfway through—” “They get cut in half?” Quinn asked, voice dry. “Worse,” Eva whispered. “They get trapped in the in-between. Neither here nor there. Mind erased. Body empty.” Quinn turned the compass in her palm. It hummed faintly. She glanced at the crushed bone token. At the paramedics. Then back at the wall. Her training screamed at her—no evidence of forced entry, no blood, no footprints. But her instincts, the ones that had carried her through 18 years and the loss of Morris—those whispered something older, stranger. Morris had gone down in a warehouse raid. No bullet. No knife. Just… gone. One moment he was at her side, radio crackling. The next, collapsed, eyes wide and unseeing, a faint shimmer in the air just above his head like heat haze on asphalt. And now this. She walked to the wall. Pressed her palm flat against the tiles. Cold. Unnatural. Then—just once—a pulse. Slow. Rhythmic. Like a heart buried in plaster. “This wasn’t a medical emergency,” Quinn said, voice low. “It was a breach.” Eva nodded. “Someone opened a rift. Accidentally or on purpose. When the paramedics arrived, the energy backlash knocked them out. Or worse—it pulled at them. Tried to drag them through.” Quinn turned sharply. “Who’d want to open a rift?” Eva hesitated. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Quinn’s gaze narrowed. She studied Eva—her grip on the satchel, the ink smudges on her fingers, the way she looked not at the compass, but at the *wall*, like she could see through it. “You knew this place existed before tonight,” Quinn said. “I’ve read about it.” “Not just read. You’ve been here.” Eva didn’t answer. Quinn took a step closer. “This Market—it moves. Every full moon. How do you find it?” “Pattern recognition,” Eva said. “Ley line convergence, electromagnetic anomalies. You track it like any other mobile operation.” “Except no warrant covers it. No protocol. No forensics team equipped for *rifts*.” Quinn’s voice dropped. “But someone’s been using it. Selling things. Dangerous things.” “People trade in power down here,” Eva admitted. “Spells. Artifacts. Knowledge that should stay buried.” “And you?” Quinn asked. “What do you trade?” “Information,” Eva said. “About the things the world pretends don’t exist.” Silence settled, broken only by the faint drip of water and the soft, insistent tremor of the compass needle. Then—distant, metallic—the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Both women turned. A vendor from the Market—hooded, face shadowed—darted into view, then froze at the sight of Quinn’s badge, glowing faintly in the dark. Eva moved first. “Don’t run. We’re not here to shut it down—not yet.” The figure hesitated. Then, slowly, pulled back their hood. An old woman, hair bone-white, one eye milky with cataract. In her hands, a leather-bound ledger. “They’re coming,” the woman rasped. “The ones who opened the rift. They’re looking for witnesses.” Quinn’s hand went to her holster. “Who?” “The Silent Syndicate,” Eva breathed. “They traffic in soul-bound relics. They’d kill for a stable rift.” The compass in Quinn’s hand twitched—then snapped hard toward the north tunnel. Something was coming. And it wasn’t human.