Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQN34NS0BCNVP79S4VEWW8

The platform smelled of old iron and wet stone, of candles burned down too close to the wick and the faint metallic tang of too many hands. Harlow Quinn stood with her shoulders back, the way drill Sergeants teach you to hold your bones when something needs weighing. The abandoned station swallowed a different kind of light—sickly, green bulbs strung between vendor stalls, candles in jars on boxes, the flash of someone else’s lighter. She kept her hands out of the pockets of her coat; the left wrist bore the worn leather watch she'd had since before DS Morris went quiet. It told the time to the second and, like her, counted the world in facts. There were ribbons of something—thin braided bone and black string—hung like improper bunting across the concourse, cordoning off a stretch of tile. Beyond them, the corpse lay half-curled on a sheet of plastic, a silence around it the crowd had learned to keep. Someone had drawn loops and slashes on the tile with a grey dust that looked, at first glance, like ash. The marks were angular and neat; they took advantage of tile grout, like a teacher underlining a point. Quinn's boots made no sound on the damp tiles. She crouched, eyes cutting the area into angles. The body was of a man in his thirties, hair cropped close, practical garments that had seen a dozen markets—faded jacket with a smear of something near the pocket, sensible boots. There was a compass in his open hand: a small brass object with verdigris green in its seams and sigils etched faint on its face. It was the sort of thing sold in the Market stalls for a small stack of bones. The needle, however, pointed not at any obvious gap in the station's stone but toward a seam in the tiled wall where two pieces of ceramic met like cold lips. "You can't be serious," said Eva Kowalski beside her, voice thin through yellowing candlelight. Her glasses caught the bulbs and threw back moons. She had pushed curls behind her left ear until the habit bent her neck; she had a satchel slung over her shoulder with the flap askew and a stack of notebooks peeking out. She smelled faintly of old paper and lavender oil, as if she'd spent the morning coaxing secrets out of museum cases. Eva's hands trembled. She crouched opposite Quinn and paused, fingers hovering over the compass. "This is a crossing attempt," she said. "Or—someone tried to open a rift. The sigils are precise. See the way the dust traces the lines—it's layered, like a burn that cooled." Quinn let her look, let the woman make the reading she needed, then watched the compass face. The brass casing was pretty from a distance; up close, the verdigris sat in uniform flakes. Patterns like that came from a brush or a dip, not from decades unraveled by damp. Someone had aged this thing with intention. The sigils etched into the face were shallow, as if a blade had been dragged in a hurry. That, she could understand. "What bone token brought him here?" she asked instead. Eva's brow furrowed, a crease in the freckled skin above her glasses. "We don't know yet. Whoever runs the Market checks tokens at the south gate—" "He wouldn't be inside if he didn't have one," Quinn said. The phrase had the small, sharp ring of certainty she favored. She'd learned long ago to trust the logistics of things: tickets torn, guards missing, locks forced. Supernatural or not, people still made mistakes in a string of choices. Eva's hand hovered over the man's wrist. The skin had the pale wax of someone who'd stopped breathing hours before. Quinn's eye snagged on the pooling of blood beside the body, a dull brown halo that suggested time had passed; not minutes, but a few hours, long enough for clotting and crust. The Market's nightly hours meant this had happened during the trade, under the hum of bargaining voices. If it was a ritual gone wrong, it was an amateur performance. If it was murder staged to look ritualistic, someone wanted attention focused on the wrong thing. "Look here," Quinn said, tapping the tile near the man's shoulder. The grey dust had settled into the grout in a way that was inconsistent with how heat would fracture and spall. Under a closer downward tilt, she could see small flakes of green enamel mixed in with the dust. Not ash. Paint and powdered copper, maybe. Someone had mixed pigments, not left ash from candles. Eva's mouth made a small surprised line. "Paint? Who would—" "Hocus pocus artists. Fakers." Quinn's voice was low. "People who need a scandal, or a diversion." "You think someone would fake a death?" Eva asked, incredulity softening the edges of her fear. Her fingers grazed the compass, and the needle twitched as if annoyed. "Faking—why not just kill him? If you wanted attention, you would have—" "I said fake a rift," Quinn interrupted. "Not a death. But the lack of a bone token—" She looked up at the assembled clusters of vendors, at a woman at the incense stall rubbing her fingers along a string of beads with a smile that did not reach her eyes. "If someone's staged a ritual here, they'd need a way through without paying the toll. That seams means service access. Or smugglers." Eva swallowed, then nodded. "The Market changes stations every full moon. Entry is tight. If anyone wanted in without a token, they'd need to bribe someone or use a staff key." "Or they'd have friendly hands inside," Quinn said. Her gaze snagged on a vendor boy at the edge of the cordon, palms white against a box labeled with a name she knew—an informal ledger Quinn had once read in a raid: Bellefleur's stall. The boy's breath came in small pants. His face was turned away. The compass needle pointed past his shoulder, unerringly, to that seam in the wall. Quinn eased forward and skimmed the compass with the pad of her thumb. The needle didn't resist. It spun a hair, then settled again toward the same seam. She felt the tiny grit at the pivot, like a cracked ball bearing, and saw a darker circle about the needle's base: adhesive. Somebody had stuck the needle. "You're certain?" Eva asked, voice too hopeful to be wholly trusting. "The needle's glued," Quinn said. "Look at the ring under the pivot. A sticky residue, slightly glossy. Fresh. Whoever set this up didn't know they'd be handling it under scrutiny. Or they didn't care." Around them, someone laughed—a short, sharp sound—and a woman began to sweep paint flakes into a stash with a practiced flick of a hand. She moved too quickly. Quinn watched her for a beat and caught the little rhythm of deception. The woman dropped her sweep into a bucket and pretended to light a cigarette. Her eyes were a warm brown; they slipped to the seam and darted back. "She wants us to look at the compass," Quinn said. "She wants us thinking a rift pulled him in or killed him. The blade marks, the dust, the compass—all show effort. But the blood—" She gestured to the pool again. "Blood tells time better than magic. He bled out here. That seam is a destination, not a portal." Eva nodded slowly, as if learning a new language. "So, someone moved him," she whispered. "Carried him, staged the scene." "Or killed him and then staged it to make the Market's rules—its secrecy—work for them." Quinn let the sentence sit. "If you make it look like the Market itself is dangerous to outsiders, you keep the cops off certain transactions. You funnel attention into spectacle." "You think it's protecting a smuggling operation," Eva breathed. Her face took on its scholar's focus. "Like someone using rumors to maintain a monopoly on certain—" She stopped and shifted her weight. "Harlow, the sigils—" "They're cosmetic," Quinn said. She had pulled a pair of gloves from a pocket and slid them on with a surgeon's ease. The man's fingers were stiff under her touch; his hand closed on the brass and released. She lifted it, felt the warmth of metal instead of old heat. The compass was light, contrived, and as she turned it she saw the underside: a small magnet embedded within the casing, its face slightly misaligned. That, she thought, was not the work of a Shade artisan. Shades had craft; this was improvised. "Magnet," she said. "Not a Shade's signature. Someone tried to make it look like a magical instrument, but they used a cheap trick. Make the needle point where you want it to point. Magnet behind a seam, needle glued to stay on target." Eva's hand flew to her mouth. "Merciful—" "People cheat," Quinn said. "People cheat when there is profit to be made or when they want to keep something hidden. The Market sells the kind of goods that make people paranoid. It also sells the kind of lie that lets them prey on that paranoia." A murmur rose. Quinn's sharp jaw clenched. In the distance, someone began to chant low and meaningless words to fill space with superstition. The vendor who had been sweeping paint flakes avoided Quinn's eyes and moved her hand in a slow, mechanical way as if trying to forget she'd been seen. "Check his pockets," Eva said suddenly, voice thin but steady. She unfastened the man's jacket with the delicate touch of someone used to handling texts and objects with care. There, under the flap, a leather satchel half-hidden bore the insignia of one of the Museum's restricted deliveries—an insignia Eva recognized and flinched at. Inside, a folded card and a strip of bone threaded on cord: a token, crudely carved but authentic. He had been brought in lawfully at some point. That token had given him entry. "Someone's taken it off him," Quinn said, eyes moving like a searching light. "Either he lost it and someone allowed him through, or someone carried him in after and popped a token in to get him out." Eva's fingers found another item: a small scrap of paper with handwriting that had nothing ritual in it—an account number, a list of items, a word Quinn had seen before in ledgers seized during smaller raids: luminal resin. A banned alchemical substance. Quinn let the name sit. Someone with access to that market had motive to protect the supply chain. "You see it now?" Quinn asked, not a question, but an invitation to join a thought. Eva's eyes met hers, wide and damp-lit. "I see a man who had access to restricted goods," Eva said. "And people who needed him silenced." "Or scared quiet." Quinn rose, knees stiff, the watch on her wrist catching one of the green bulbs. Her hand hovered above the seam in the tiled wall. The compass needle had pointed there; the glue on the pivot suggested intent; the magnet suggested control. The seam was shallow, a maintenance door with a handle shaved free of years of use. "Open it," Eva whispered. Her voice was a small bell of hope and terror. "If it's a stash—if it's—" "If it's what I'm thinking," Quinn said, "it's a way out for contraband and a way to keep certain people from leaving the Market on their own. Whoever runs this operation knows how to make fear work for them. They stage a ritual and the crowd buys the story. That keeps the watchful eyes off their ledger." She moved to the seam and ran gloved fingers along the grout. There were scratch marks on the lower tile where something had been levered. Fresh oil smudged a hinge, faint but present, the smell thin and particular—machine oil, not the natural grease of old trains. Someone had oiled the hinge in the last few hours. "Someone moved him," Quinn said again. "And someone wanted us looking at magic." Eva sucked air through her teeth. "Then the compass was a red herring." "A planted red herring." Quinn straightened and surveyed the crowd. She saw it now: the woman with the beads, her smile too quick; the vendor boy who had been hovering with the ledger—his hands had ink on them; the market's seller who'd been angling towards the seam, nervous as a cat. Under the green light, faces were all shadows and intent. Quinn felt something like gratitude toward the old, stubborn instincts left after Morris: a readiness to parse mechanical errors and human motivations before attributing the impossible. She had lost a partner to the kind of inexplicable event that made men buckle their knees. That loss had taught her to look twice, three times. It had taught her that sometimes a supernatural story was someone's elaborate cover. "Seal the area," she said, voice traveling back through the huddled crowd. "Nobody leaves until we examine that seam and every stall within twenty feet. Get me a log of who signed tokens in tonight, and pull Bellefleur's ledger." A pair of uniformed officers moved to obey. Someone lit another candle and the light carved faces into white, soft and human. Eva pressed her hand to Quinn's sleeve, fingers warm. Her eyes were fierce and small behind her glasses. "You think it's the clique," she said. It wasn't a question; it was the rest of the accusation Quinn had left unsaid. Quinn's mouth thinned. She did think it. The clique—tight, territorial vendors who controlled supply and information—had reasons to manufacture peril. They thrived on the Veil Market's secrecy. They had the means and motive. But the evidence was a map of small things: a glued needle, a magnet embedded in brass, fresh oil on a hinge, paint mixed to look like ash, a ledger entry for luminal resin. Each piece by itself could be misread. Together they drew a direction. "Start with the supply chain," Quinn said. "And pull the vendor who sold that compass. Find out who has a history of crafting odds and ends. We'll find the magnet's source. We'll find out who paid for the paint and who bought machine oil at midnight." She turned the compass over in her gloved hand once, felt the slight imperfection beneath the brass, felt the adhesive tack. The compass wanted to lead her somewhere—someone had wanted it to. Quinn set it down on the plastic sheet near the corpse like an accusation. "Don't tell yourself a story because it's comforting," she added softly, almost to herself. "Tell yourself the story the facts demand." Eva nodded, tucking a stray curl back behind her ear with a hand that shook less now. The Market murmured like a living thing, its vendors rearranging their lies and truths in the green light. Quinn looked over the crowd, the seam in the wall like an invitation and a threat, and felt the steady unblinking shape of work tighten around her ribs. Someone had wanted people to look at superstition. Quinn would make them look at bookkeeping instead.