Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQGH4P4F2MXBWYY137JN4K

The air in the abandoned Tube station tasted of rust and damp earth, thick with the ghost of coal smoke and something older—something that clung to the back of the throat like wet wool. Detective Harlow Quinn stepped over cracked tiles, her polished brogues clicking against the uneven platform. Her breath plumed in the frigid air, the glow of her torch cutting a narrow path through the gloom. The beam caught the edge of peeling posters advertising long-dead bands, their colors muted by time and moisture. Somewhere deep in the tunnels, water dripped in a slow, maddening rhythm. This wasn’t a crime scene by any ordinary measure. No tape, no uniforms, no chalk outline. Just the silence of a forgotten place, and the body. DS Carl Riggs crouched near the tracks, gloved fingers hovering over a dark stain that seeped into the gravel. He looked up as she approached, his face pale under the flicker of his own flashlight. “Quinn. Took you long enough.” “You said it was urgent,” she replied, her voice low, clipped. Her eyes scanned the space—not just the body, but the curvature of the tunnel, the placement of old signage, the absence of foot traffic. Too clean. Too deliberate. The victim lay half on the trackbed, half on the platform. Male, mid-thirties, dressed in a tailored coat now torn at the shoulder. No wallet. No ID. But his hands—his hands were clenched into fists, one curled around a small, bone-white token etched with looping script. She’d seen symbols like that before. In the margins of Morris’s final logbook. In the dreams that followed. “Cause of death?” she asked, not looking at Riggs. “Heart stopped. No wound. No sign of trauma,” Riggs said, standing. “No tox results yet, but we’re thinking poison. Fast-acting. Exotic maybe. Forensics hasn’t seen anything like this residue near his mouth.” He waved toward a scattering of iridescent dust, almost glittering in the torchlight. Quinn crouched beside the body, careful not to touch. Her left hand drifted instinctively to her watch—the worn leather band creaking softly. She exhaled through her nose. The residue wasn’t just iridescent. It had a pattern. Microscopic, but deliberate. Like crushed glass fused with ash. “This wasn’t poison,” she said. Riggs snorted. “Then what? Spontaneous cardiac arrest in a healthy man? On a platform no one’s used in fifty years?” She ignored him, scanning the tunnel walls. Graffiti here, yes, but none over this section. A deliberate blankness. And the tracks—no train had run here in decades, but the metal was unnaturally clean. Too clean. Then she saw it. Faint, almost invisible unless you were looking for it: a series of shallow carvings in the brickwork. A spiral, three concentric circles, and beneath it, a glyph that made her pulse skip. The same symbol from Morris’s notes. The same one she’d found carved into his desk the night they pulled his body from the river. “Did the first responders touch anything?” she asked. “No. We sealed it when we found the token. It looked… off.” Quinn stood, turning slowly. Her eyes caught on a shadow that didn’t belong. Not deeper dark, but *wrong* dark. Like a patch of air that swallowed light. She stepped toward it, boot scraping gravel. “Quinn, don’t—” She raised a hand, silencing him. The air shifted. Cold, sudden, like walking into a walk-in freezer. And then—a sound. Not from the tunnel. From *beyond* it. A low, harmonic hum, like distant singing. She pulled back. “What the hell was that?” Riggs whispered. “Not here,” she said. “Not *now*.” She stepped to the body again, this time kneeling at the head. She didn’t touch, but leaned close. The man’s mouth was slightly open. She tilted her head, studying the residue inside the corners of his lips. Not dust. Ash. And not just any ash. She reached into her coat, pulling out a small evidence bag. With gloved fingers, she carefully collected a sample. Then she noticed it—the man’s left ear. A small, almost invisible puncture. Not a bite. Too precise. Surgical. Her jaw tightened. “This wasn’t a murder,” she said quietly. “What do you mean?” “It was a *delivery*,” she said. “He was carrying something. They needed what was inside him. The heart stop—that was after. A failsafe. When the message was extracted.” Riggs stared. “You’re talking like he was a *mule* for some kind of… supernatural cartel?” She didn’t answer. Instead, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her notebook. Flipped to a page near the back. Sketches. Symbols. Her own handwriting, dense, obsessive. *Morris’s last case. The missing curator. The reports filed under “psychotic break.” The whispers about a place beneath the city where things that shouldn’t exist are bought and sold.* Her finger brushed a sketched symbol: a compass with a spiraling needle. Then, from the edge of the platform, a new sound. Footsteps. Light, hesitant. A woman emerged from the tunnel mouth, silhouetted by the dim emergency bulb far down the line. She wore a long coat too big for her frame, round glasses glinting, and carried a worn leather satchel. Her red curls were half-tucked under a scarf, and she kept tucking a loose strand behind her left ear—nervous, furtive. “Detective Quinn?” the woman said, voice trembling slightly. Quinn stood, turning slowly. “You’re not police.” “My name is Eva Kowalski. I—I knew the victim.” Riggs stepped forward. “How?” Eva hesitated. “We… worked together. At the Museum. Archives. He was researching old transit maps. Underground routes.” Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not why you’re here.” Eva swallowed. “No. I came because I found something. After he didn’t show up for our meeting.” From her satchel, she pulled out a small brass compass. The casing was green with verdigris, the face etched with sigils. Quinn’s breath caught. “The Veil Compass,” Eva said. “It points to rifts. Portals. Places like this one.” She looked past them, toward the patch of wrong darkness. “He was supposed to deliver it. Tonight. At the Market.” “The *what*?” Riggs barked. “The Veil Market,” Eva said, as if it were common knowledge. “It moves. Full moon to full moon. This station—it’s a gateway. The bone token? That’s the key.” Quinn stared at the compass. Then at the body. The puncture. The ash. The symbol. Pieces slotted together. Morris hadn’t died in a botched raid. He’d been *expendable*. Too close to something real. Something hidden beneath the city’s skin. And now this. She turned to Eva. “Why tell me?” Eva met her gaze, green eyes sharp behind her lenses. “Because you’re the only one who’s seen the edges of it. And because if they come back for the compass, you’re the only one who’ll believe what they are.” Riggs laughed, a short, disbelieving bark. “This is lunacy. A dead body, and you’re talking about ghost markets and magic compasses?” Quinn didn’t look at him. She reached out, took the compass from Eva’s hand. The needle—dull at first—shivered. Then spun. And slowly, inexorably, it pointed not down the tunnel. But straight at Riggs. Her eyes lifted to his face. And saw, for the first time, the faint iridescence clinging to the cuff of his sleeve. The same dust. The same ash. She didn’t speak. But her hand moved slowly to her sidearm. The air hummed again. Closer this time.