Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQKEEW14WT69QF17HCGPCF

The air in the abandoned Tube station beneath Camden tasted of copper and ozone, a flavor Harlow Quinn had come to associate with things that should not exist. She adjusted the cuffs of her jacket, her movements sharp, bearing the unconscious military precision that eighteen years on the force had drilled into her bone marrow. It was three in the morning, and the silence of the underground was heavy, pressing against her eardrums like deep water. She stood at the edge of the platform, the beam of her torch cutting through the gloom. This wasn't just a derelict station; until an hour ago, this had been the Veil Market. She could still feel the residual hum of the place, a static charge that made the hair on her arms stand up. The stalls were gone—mostly. The supernatural flea market had a schedule that defied the Gregorian calendar, moving every full moon, but tonight it had scattered early. Quinn knew why. A body lay crumpled near the entrance to what used to be the northbound tunnel. "Don't touch the perimeter," Quinn said, her voice low but echoing off the curved tiles. Eva Kowalski jumped, her hand flying up to tuck a stray lock of curly red hair behind her left ear. She stood near a pile of discarded crates, clutching a worn leather satchel to her chest as if it contained shielding rather than books. "I wasn't," Eva said, adjusting her round glasses. "I was just… reading the residue." "Read with your eyes, Miss Kowalski. Not your fingers." Quinn stepped closer to the corpse. She didn't like needing Eva. The girl was too young, too jumpy, and far too connected to the group of self-styled occultists Quinn had been tracking for months. But Eva knew the language of this underworld, and Quinn was tired of walking blind. The victim was male, arguably human, though in this light, and in this place, assumptions were dangerous. He wore a heavy velvet coat that had seen better centuries. His face was frozen in a rictus of terror, eyes wide and milky. "It was a Soul Flaying," Eva whispered, stepping up beside Quinn, though she kept a respectful distance from the gore. "Look at the lack of external trauma. His spirit was torn right out of the casing. It’s a Shade signature. I’ve read about this in the archives." Quinn ignored her, crouching beside the body. She rested her forearms on her knees, her sharp jaw set tight. She glanced at the worn leather watch on her left wrist—a habit from the days when DS Morris was still alive, still timing their response intervals. Morris would have made a joke about the smell. Quinn just breathed through her mouth. "Soul Flaying," Quinn repeated, flatly. "That’s your professional opinion?" "It fits the environment," Eva said, her voice gaining a little academic traction. " The Veil Market is neutral ground, but barely. If he sold a counterfeit charm to a Shade artisan, they wouldn’t bother with a knife. They’d just reach inside and…" She made a gripping motion with her hand. "Pop." Quinn didn't answer. She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and snapped them on. The sound was a gunshot in the quiet station. "Shades don't leave mud," Quinn said. She pointed to the hem of the victim's velvet coat. There was a smear of greyish clay, distinct against the dark fabric. "And they don't leave bruises that suggest a struggle with a blunt object." She gently tilted the victim's chin, revealing a dark purple contusion just below the jawline. "He could have fallen when the spirit left him," Eva argued, though she leaned in, squinting through her glasses. "The magical backlash could have thrown him against the wall." "Physics doesn't take a holiday just because we're in a wizard's basement, Eva." Quinn stood up, her brown eyes scanning the immediate area. The platform was littered with trash—wrappers, broken glass, the detritus of a panicking crowd. But there was something else. Lying a few feet away, half-hidden under a discarded newspaper, was a small brass object. Quinn stepped over, crouching again to retrieve it. It was a compass, but not one that would help anyone navigate the London streets. The casing was heavy, coated in a patina of verdigris that felt greasy to the touch. The face was etched with sigils that made Quinn’s eyes ache if she focused on them too long. "That's a Veil Compass," Eva said, her breath hitching. "Be careful. It points to the nearest rift. If there’s an instability nearby, that might be what killed him." Quinn held the object flat in her palm. The needle wasn't pointing north. In fact, it wasn't pointing at anything. It was spinning lazily, clockwise, then counter-clockwise. "It's confused," Eva said. "The energy here… it's too chaotic. The murderer must have unleashed a massive amount of power to scramble a tool like that." "Or," Quinn said, her mind working through the geometry of the scene, "it's not scrambling. It’s looking for something it can’t find." Quinn looked back at the body. She looked at the bloodless face, then down to the floor. The dust on the platform was thick. There were footprints everywhere—a stampede of sellers fleeing the scene. But around the body, the dust was disturbed in a drag pattern. "He wasn't killed here," Quinn said. Eva looked around the empty station. "What? But the Market was here. He fell here." "He was dumped here," Quinn corrected. She walked back to the body, shining her torch at a low angle across the floor tiles. "Look at the scuff marks on his heels. Someone dragged him backwards. And look at the coat." She pointed to the back of the velvet garment. It was bunched up around the shoulders. "If he fell forward, or was thrown back by a blast, the coat would sit differently. Someone grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him. And they did it after he was dead weight." Quinn turned the Veil Compass over in her hand. "You said this points to a rift? A source of supernatural power?" "Yes," Eva nodded, tucking her hair back again. "It detects the tear between our world and the supernatural." "Then why isn't it pointing at the body?" Quinn asked. Eva blinked, her green eyes wide behind the lenses. "I... excuse me?" "If he was killed by a 'Soul Flaying' or some massive discharge of magic, he should be radioactive with the stuff. We’re standing in a magical marketplace. The needle should be pinned to *something*." Quinn tapped the glass face of the compass. "It's drifting. That means there's no active signal strong enough to lock onto." Quinn walked toward the tunnel entrance, the darkness yawning before her. She stopped and shined her light onto the track bed. There, in the recess between the rails and the platform edge, she saw it. A small, crushed casing. Brass. Not magical. A 9mm shell casing. "He wasn't flayed," Quinn said, her voice dropping an octave, becoming the cold, hard thing that frightened rookie constables. "He was shot. Small caliber, probably silenced. Entering through the back, likely severed the spinal cord. Instant drop. That’s why there’s no blood spray." She turned to face Eva, who looked pale, her satchel clutched so tight her knuckles were white. "The killer dragged him onto the platform and staged the scene," Quinn continued, the narrative slotting into place with the click of a well-oiled slide. "They wanted it to look like a trade gone wrong. A magical dispute. They cleared the market with a scare—maybe a flash-bang or a minor cantrip to panic the herd—then dumped the body." Eva stared at the shell casing in the track bed. "But... why? Why go to all that trouble? Why not just leave him?" "Because if the police find a man shot in a Tube station, it's a murder investigation. We grid the area. We pull CCTV from the surface. We interview witnesses." Quinn narrowed her eyes, looking at the salt-and-pepper reflection of her own severe face in the dark subway window. "But if a man dies of 'mysterious causes' in a hidden magical market? The police don't come down here. Only I do. And the people of the Market... they don't talk to cops. They write it off as a hazard of the trade." Quinn walked back to Eva, looming over the smaller woman. "This wasn't a monster, Miss Kowalski. It was a professional hit. Human. Precise. Secular." She held up the Veil Compass. "And this? It was planted. A prop to sell the story. It's not spinning because of chaos. It's spinning because someone demagnetized the needle so it wouldn't point to the rifts they used to escape." Eva let out a slow breath, her shoulders slumping. "I was so ready to see the magic," she admitted quietly. "I didn't look for the man." "That's how they get away with it," Quinn said, pocketing the compass as evidence. She felt the weight of the bone token in her pocket, the pass-key that had allowed them entry. It felt heavy, like a betrayer's coin. "People like you look for the impossible. Detectives look for the motive." Quinn checked her watch again. 3:15 AM. "Come on," Quinn said, turning back toward the exit stairs. "We need to find who he was before the Market moved. And Eva?" "Yes, Detective?" "Next time you see a crime scene," Quinn said, her tone softening just a fraction, "trust your eyes, not your books. The dead rarely lie, but the living don't do anything else." Quinn began the ascent to the surface, her mind already cataloging the variables. A 9mm in a place of swords and sorcery. Someone was bringing modern warfare to the ancient world, and for the first time since Morris died, Quinn felt like she was on solid ground. She didn't understand magic. But she understood murder perfectly.