Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQR8QE9AWVA7KZM16ZNCG0

The stench hit Quinn before she ducked under the police tape—Thames water, rust, and something acrid that made her sinuses burn. The abandoned station platform stretched into darkness beyond the crime scene floods, its tiled walls streaked with a century of grime and something that glistened wetly in the harsh light. DS Patel looked up from his notebook as Quinn's boots crunched across scattered debris. "Ma'am. Victim's a John Doe, mid-thirties, no identification. Night shift worker from the construction site above called it in around oh-four-hundred." Quinn nodded, her gaze already sweeping the scene with the methodical precision that had become second nature over eighteen years. The body lay sprawled near the platform edge, one arm flung out toward the tracks. Male, dressed in expensive wool coat and leather shoes that didn't match the location. No one dressed like that wandered into sealed Underground stations by accident. "Cause of death?" "That's where it gets strange." Patel shifted his weight, and Quinn caught the uncomfortable tightness around his eyes. "No visible wounds. No signs of struggle. Forensics is thinking cardiac arrest, but..." He gestured at the platform. "Look at the burn pattern." Quinn crouched beside the body, careful not to disturb the evidence markers. The concrete around the victim showed a perfect circle of scorching, black char marks radiating outward like a frozen explosion. She'd seen electrical burns before—they didn't look like this. The pattern was too precise, too deliberate. The edges were sharp as if drawn with a compass. She touched the worn leather of her watch, grounding herself in its familiar weight. Three years ago, she would have accepted cardiac arrest and moved on. Three years ago, she hadn't found Morris's body in that warehouse with the walls covered in symbols she still couldn't explain. "Cameras?" "None functional down here. Station's been closed since 1955." Patel flipped through his notes. "But here's the thing—we found traces of footprints leading toward the northwest tunnel. Recent, maybe hours old. Multiple individuals." Quinn stood, following the direction Patel indicated. The tunnel entrance yawned beyond the police tape, swallowing the flood lights. Something glinted near the track bed, and she moved closer, pulling her torch from her belt. A small brass compass lay half-buried in decades of dust and refuse. She photographed it in place, then lifted it with gloved fingers. The casing showed heavy wear, verdigris eating at the edges, but the face was etched with markings she didn't recognize—geometric patterns, symbols that hurt to look at too long. The needle spun lazily, ignoring magnetic north to point insistently toward the northwest tunnel. "Patel. Did forensics catalog this?" "What've you got?" She held it up, watching his expression shift from curiosity to confusion as the needle continued its unnatural rotation. "Compass. But it's not working properly." "Could be broken." Patel's tone suggested he was trying to convince himself. Quinn turned the compass over. No maker's mark. No serial number. Just smooth brass and those unsettling etchings that seemed to shift in her peripheral vision. She thought of the files locked in her desk drawer at the station—the Morris case, the unexplained deaths over the past three years that shared certain characteristics. Bodies in impossible locations. Evidence that contradicted itself. Witnesses who changed their stories or disappeared entirely. "The victim's pockets. What did we find?" Patel consulted his notes. "Wallet—expensive, but empty of cash and cards. Some kind of carved bone token, approximately two inches long. Keys. And..." He paused. "Ticket stub from the British Museum's restricted archives. Dated yesterday." The British Museum's restricted archives. Quinn's jaw tightened. She'd been building a file on three persons of interest, and one of them worked there. Eva Kowalski, research assistant. Friend of Aurora Sinclair, who kept appearing at the periphery of her investigations like a shadow Quinn couldn't quite catch. "The bone token. Let me see it." Patel retrieved the evidence bag from the forensics kit. The token was smooth, yellowed with age, carved with a symbol that matched nothing in Quinn's mental database of gang signs or criminal markings. But it matched the style of those etchings on the compass. She walked the perimeter of the burn marks, torch beam cutting through the gloom. The scorching was consistent all the way around—no variation in depth or intensity. That required specialized equipment or chemicals. Or something else, something she'd been trained her entire career to dismiss as impossible. Near the northwest edge of the pattern, she found them—partial boot prints in the dust, and smaller shoe prints. Women's, size seven or eight. The treads led away from the body, toward the tunnel where the compass insisted on pointing. "Patel, I want every security camera in a three-block radius pulled. Traffic cameras, shop fronts, anything that might have caught someone entering or leaving this area between midnight and oh-four-hundred." "You think it's murder?" Quinn straightened, her sharp features set in the expression that had earned her a reputation for being relentless. "I think someone went to considerable effort to make this look like natural causes while leaving evidence that contradicts that conclusion. The burn pattern alone suggests accelerants or equipment we haven't identified. The location means the victim either came here voluntarily or was brought here post-mortem." "Or he was chased," Patel offered. Quinn considered this. The boot prints did suggest haste. But they led away from the body, not toward it. Multiple individuals, moving with purpose through a sealed Underground station that shouldn't be accessible. Carrying bone tokens and strange compasses that pointed at things that shouldn't exist. She thought of Eva Kowalski's curly red hair and round glasses, captured on CCTV near three separate incidents over the past six months. Always present, never quite close enough to question. Always with an explanation that fell just short of believable. The compass needle swung in Quinn's palm, pulling insistently toward the darkness. Toward whatever market or meeting place or ritual site these people were using in the forgotten spaces beneath London. She'd spent three years piecing together fragments of impossible evidence, trying to understand what had killed her partner. This compass, this body, this pattern—they were pieces of the same puzzle. "Get me a full workup on that bone token," Quinn said, bagging the compass carefully. "Cross-reference with any similar items logged in evidence over the past five years. And Patel—" She met his eyes. "This stays between us until we know what we're dealing with. Understood?" Patel nodded slowly, his gaze drifting to the burn marks, the compass, the dark tunnel entrance. "Ma'am, what do you think we're dealing with?" Quinn adjusted her watch, feeling the familiar weight anchor her. "I don't know yet. But I intend to find out."