Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQRAHNKSW0MKG5FG698WSA

The abandoned Tube station smelled of wet concrete and something else—something copper-sweet that Harlow Quinn had learned to associate with bad days. She stepped over the police tape, her worn leather watch catching the glare of the temporary work lights as she ducked beneath the yellow plastic. Uniforms milled about the platform, their breath clouding in the underground chill. Someone had brought in portable heaters, but they fought a losing battle against the damp that seeped from the tiled walls. "Detective Quinn." DC Miller materialized at her elbow, too close, always too eager. Twenty-eight and green as spring grass, he still treated every crime scene like an episode he was auditioning for. "Thanks for coming down. I know it's late notice, but the skipper thought you'd want to see this one personally." Quinn's sharp jaw tightened. The skipper thought right, but she wasn't about to give Miller the satisfaction. "Walk me through it." "Right, yes." He gestured toward the eastern end of the platform where the tunnel mouth gaped like a wound. "Body was found approximately four hours ago by a team from Transport for London. They were doing a structural assessment on the old Camden tunnels—this station's been decommissioned since the thirties. Worker spotted the vic just past the platform edge, about twenty meters into the tunnel." Quinn was already moving, her shoes clicking against the grimy tiles. Military precision in every step, even after eighteen years on the force. She noted the faded advertisements on the walls—Players Please, a woman in Victory Rolls smiling down at them like a ghost from another era. "Who's the victim?" "Male, mid-thirties. No ID on the body, but we ran his prints." Miller hurried to keep pace. "One Sebastian Crane. Small-time fence, mostly dealt in stolen electronics. A few priors for receiving stolen goods, nothing violent." "And the cause of death?" Miller's pace faltered slightly. "That's... where things get interesting." Quinn stopped at the platform edge. The tunnel beyond swallowed the work lights whole, but she could make out the forensic team huddled around something in the darkness. "Define interesting, Miller." "See for yourself, Detective." She stepped down onto the tracks, feeling the grit of decades beneath her soles. The forensic technicians parted as she approached, their faces wearing that particular expression she'd come to recognize—the one that said they'd seen something that didn't fit neatly into their reports. The body lay on its back between the rusted rails, arms spread wide as if embracing the darkness above. Quinn crouched beside it, studying the face frozen in its final expression. Not fear, she noted. Something closer to surprise, perhaps. The man had been handsome once, in a rough way, but the last few hours had stripped that away. "No visible wounds," Miller said from behind her. "No ligature marks, no defensive injuries. tox screen's pending, but the preliminary exam shows no signs of overdose—no needle tracks, no residue around the nose or mouth. It's like his heart just... stopped." Quinn leaned closer, her brown eyes cataloging details. The victim's clothes were damp but intact—a decent jacket, good boots. Not the wardrobe of a man who'd been living rough. His hands were clean, the nails trimmed. She noticed something glinting at his wrist and reached out with a gloved hand to turn it toward the light. A watch. Expensive. Still ticking. "Robbery wasn't the motive," she murmured. "He's got a watch worth two grand minimum, a gold ring, cash in his wallet." "We've been working on the assumption that he was meeting someone down here. Maybe a deal gone wrong. The location's remote enough for an exchange—drug trade, maybe, or something from his fencing operation." Quinn sat back on her heels, her salt-and-pepper hair casting shadows across her face in the harsh work lights. "His fencing operation dealt in televisions and laptops, Miller. Not exactly the kind of merchandise you need to meet about in an abandoned Tube station at—" she checked her watch "—two in the morning." "Maybe he was branching out." She didn't respond. Her attention had shifted to the victim's right hand, curled loosely at his side. Something was tucked between his fingers, so small she'd nearly missed it. She leaned in, tilting her head to catch the light. It was a slip of paper, rolled tight as a cigarette. Using her pen, she carefully teased it free and flattened it against the rail beside the body. A symbol. Hand-drawn in what looked like charcoal, though it smudged differently—darker, denser. The design was angular, almost geometric, but with curves that seemed to shift the longer she looked at it. Three intersecting arcs surrounding a central point. "Bag this," she said, straightening. "And get me everything we have on symbols, cults, anything like this in the database." Miller peered at the paper before the tech slid it into an evidence bag. "You think it's cult-related? In Camden?" "I think someone drew a symbol on a piece of paper and tucked it into a dead man's hand, Miller. I don't know what it means yet." She turned away, scanning the tunnel. The darkness pressed in from both directions now, the work lights creating a small island of visibility. She walked a slow circle around the body, her mind working through what she knew. A fence meeting someone in an abandoned station. No signs of violence. A symbol she didn't recognize. And something else—something that prickled at the back of her neck, a sensation she'd learned to trust over three very long years. "What's through there?" She pointed toward a service door set into the tunnel wall, partially hidden by decades of accumulated grime. Miller blinked. "That's just a maintenance access, I think. Goes to the old ventilation shafts." "Has anyone checked it?" "I don't—Sarge!" He waved over one of the uniforms. "Can we get that door examined? The Detective wants to know if it's been accessed recently." Quinn was already moving toward it, her attention caught by something on the ground near the door's base. She crouched again, tilting her torch to illuminate the concrete. Dust. Disturbed dust, in a pattern that suggested footprints—but not the boots of the forensic team. These were older, partially covered by the fresh prints. Someone had stood here for a long time, their weight shifting from foot to foot. And beside the prints, nearly invisible against the dark concrete, was a small brass disc. She picked it up carefully, turning it in her gloved palm. A compass, its casing worn with age, a patina of verdigris coating the brass. The face was etched with markings she didn't immediately recognize—sigils of some kind, protective or otherwise. The needle spun lazily, pointing toward— Quinn frowned. The needle was pointing directly at the maintenance door. "Found something?" Miller had followed her, his tone shifting to one of genuine interest. "Maybe." She held up the compass. "Evidence bag." "What is it?" "A compass. But not a standard one." She watched the needle as she turned, noting how it adjusted, always returning to the same direction. "It's pointing at something." "Probably just broken. Needles go haywire near electrical lines, and there's old wiring everywhere down here." Quinn turned to face him, her sharp gaze catching the torchlight. "The electrical lines haven't been live in decades, Miller. This station's been decommissioned since before you were born." "I just mean—" "I know what you mean." She handed the compass to a waiting technician. "But this isn't electrical interference. Look at the face. Someone etched these markings deliberately. This was made for a purpose." Miller studied the compass in the bag, his expression shifting from skepticism to something more uncertain. "You think it's connected to the victim?" "I think Sebastian Crane was a small-time fence who somehow ended up in an abandoned Tube station in the middle of the night with a specialized compass in his pocket and a symbol clutched in his dead hand. And I think whoever he was meeting wanted something from him—something worth killing for without leaving a mark." "That's impossible, though. No weapon, no poison—" "Nothing is impossible, Miller. Just improbable." She turned back toward the body, her mind working through the puzzle. "I knew someone once who would have understood this. Someone who saw things the rest of us miss." She didn't elaborate. She never talked about Morris, not to junior detectives who wouldn't understand the weight of losing a partner to something you couldn't explain, couldn't prove, couldn't even articulate without sounding mad. But she could feel it now—that same prickle at the base of her skull, the same sense that there were layers to this scene she wasn't yet equipped to see. The compass pointed at the door. The symbol pointed at something else entirely. And somewhere in the spaces between, the truth was waiting. "Get the door open," she said. "And Miller? Call the archives at the British Museum. I want to know if anyone there recognizes that symbol." "The British Museum? Detective, with respect, this is a homicide investigation, not an archaeological dig." Quinn turned to face the darkness of the tunnel, her reflection ghosting in the tile work across the way. "It's both, Miller. It's both."