Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQJ3P4V24QWAP5C27874Y8

Rain drummed against the pavement above, a steady, muffled rhythm seeping through the cracked tiling of the abandoned tunnel. Detective Harlow Quinn stood at the edge of the chalk outline, her sharp jaw clenched as she surveyed the scene. Beneath the flicker of portable halogen lamps, the body of a man—mid-thirties, suited, ID reading “Julian Rook”—lay sprawled across the dusty concrete platform of what had once been part of the Metropolitan line. Now, it was something else entirely. Camden’s abandoned Tube station had been repurposed long ago, whispered about in underworld circles. Officially, it didn’t exist. But Quinn knew better. The air tasted wrong—thicker than it should be, carrying a metallic aftertaste that stung the back of her throat. And the walls… they didn’t echo right. Her worn leather watch ticked unevenly on her left wrist, the second hand stuttering at precise seven-second intervals. A junior uniform, DS Lyle, approached, clipboard in hand. “Single gunshot wound to the chest. No weapon at the scene. No signs of struggle. CCTV’s been out for years. Forensics hasn’t turned up shell casings yet, but they’re still checking.” He cleared his throat. “Looks like a clean hit. Professional.” Quinn didn’t respond immediately. She crouched beside the body, her military bearing lending precision even to the motion. The man’s hands were clean, nails unbroken. His shoes—Italian leather, scuffed at the toe—showed no sign of drag marks. Blood had pooled beneath him, dark and viscous, forming a halo against the pale gray concrete. But something made her frown. She leaned closer. The bullet entry was small, tight. Exit wound… nonexistent. “Where’s the back splash?” she asked quietly. Lyle hesitated. “Sir?” “No exit wound,” Quinn said, standing. “No fragmentation, no tissue spray behind him. A .45 at close range? That kind of velocity should’ve punched through.” She scanned the wall behind the body. It was bare, clean. “And yet nothing. No residue, no spatter. Like the bullet just… stopped.” Lyle shuffled. “Maybe it’s buried in him. Ballistics might pull it.” Quinn shook her head. Her eyes flicked to the man’s coat. It was rumpled, yes, but strangely undisturbed—no burn marks, no singeing. Close-range gunshots tended to leave those. And then there was the air. She closed her eyes, listening. Not just to Lyle’s breathing or the drip of water from a fractured pipe overhead, but to the absence. The silence here wasn’t natural. It was absorbed. Like sound was being eaten by the walls. She reached into her coat pocket and withdrew her phone. No signal. Not surprising. But when she pulled out her flashlight and swept it across the ceiling, she caught something she hadn’t noticed before—carvings. Faint, almost imperceptible, etched into the tiled surface. Circles within circles, intersecting lines, symbols that looked neither Latin nor Cyrillic, but older. “DS Lyle,” she said, voice low. “When did the call come in?” “Around 2:17 a.m. Anonymous tip. Dispatch got a garbled voice saying there was a body in Sector 7 of the old Northern Line substation.” Her eyes narrowed. There was no Sector 7. Not on any official map. And then she saw it. Just past the edge of the chalk outline, partially covered by a tattered newspaper, a small object glinted in the lamplight. Quinn stepped over, crouched again, and gently peeled the paper aside. A brass compass. Not standard issue. It was old, the casing stained with a deep patina of verdigris, the face etched with tiny, intricate sigils. The needle wasn’t pointing north. It trembled, oscillating wildly, then suddenly snapped to a fixed direction—due east, toward a blank stretch of wall where a sealed service door had long ago been bricked up. Her fingers brushed the casing. Cold. Too cold. “Never seen anything like that,” Lyle said, frowning. Quinn didn’t answer. Her mind was already turning, connecting patterns. Three years ago, Morris had died in an alley off Whitechapel. No weapon found. No shooter. Just a body, a single wound, and a silence so profound the responding officers had reported their radios flat-lined. They’d called it a malfunction. She hadn’t. And now this. She straightened, holstering the compass carefully into an evidence bag. “I want this sealed. No lab analysis yet. Not until I clear it.” Lyle opened his mouth to protest, but another voice cut in. “That won’t be necessary, Detective.” Quinn turned. A young woman stood at the mouth of the tunnel, silhouetted by the dim emergency lighting. She was small, with a flurry of curly red hair barely contained beneath a woolen hat. Round glasses framed intense green eyes, and a worn leather satchel hung heavily from her shoulder. She took a step forward, tucking a lock of hair behind her left ear—a nervous habit Quinn noted instantly. “Eva Kowalski,” the woman said. “Research assistant at the British Museum. I’m consulting on unusual… artifacts. This case was flagged.” Quinn’s instinct flared. “You’re not on my team.” “No,” Eva agreed. “But I know what that compass is. And I know why your forensics won’t find a bullet.” Quinn crossed her arms. “Enlighten me.” Eva approached cautiously. “That’s a Veil Compass. Handcrafted by a Shade artisan—rare, forbidden. It detects supernatural rifts. That needle? It’s not pointing at a door. It’s pointing at a thin place. A tear between this world and another.” Lyle snorted. “You’re joking.” Eva didn’t smile. “Julian Rook wasn’t shot, Detective. He was *erased*. Something came through. Briefly. Just long enough to take him out. The bullet never existed in our dimension—it was fired from the other side.” Quinn studied her. The woman was calm, but there was a tension in her shoulders, a wariness beneath the composure. And something else—the faint scent of old parchment and something herbal, like sage and iron. “You expect me to believe that?” Quinn asked. “Look at the evidence,” Eva said, pointing. “No shell casings. No exit wound. No gunpowder residue. No logical trajectory. And that silence? It’s the residual dampening effect of a closed rift. They leave an echoless space. Like a bubble where physics stutters.” Quinn’s gaze returned to the compass. The needle still pointed east. She stepped toward the bricked wall, running her gloved hand over the mortar. It was cracked. And behind one fissure… She pulled out her penlight and shone it in. A hairline gap. Not just in the wall. In the air. A shimmer, like heat haze over asphalt. Her breath caught. “Three years ago,” she said quietly, “my partner died in an alley. Same lack of evidence. Same silence.” Eva stepped beside her. “It happened before. Rook was an occult collector. He was trying to open a conduit. Probably bought something from the Veil Market.” Quinn stiffened. “The what?” “The underground supernatural black market. It moves every full moon. Last known location? Abandoned stations beneath Camden.” Quinn turned, her brown eyes locking onto Eva’s green ones. “And you know about this how?” Eva hesitated. “Because I’ve been tracking people like Rook. And I’ve been trying to understand what happened to the man who disappeared from that alley in Whitechapel.” The air between them thickened. Quinn didn’t lower her guard. But for the first time in years, the case—the one that had haunted her, broken her trust in evidence, in logic—felt within reach. Not solved. But seen. She looked back at the compass, then at the thin place in the wall. Something had come through. And now, so had the truth.