Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQRY8VFKBNQQD181R0Y096

The stairs down to the platform smelled of wet brick and ozone, a metallic tang that caught in the back of the throat. Detective Harlow Quinn descended with her hand trailing along the cold iron railing, her worn leather watch strap catching on the rivets. Eleven-forty-three. Three years to the day since DS Morris had died in a basement not unlike this one, surrounded by evidence that made sense to everyone except the people who had to write the reports. She stepped onto the platform. The abandoned Tube station beneath Camden had been sealed in the seventies, but the tiles still held their sickly cream color, and the tracks gleamed with recent disturbance. Not dust, then. Activity. The body lay curled against the far wall, knees drawn to chest, head lolled forward. Male, mid-thirties, track marks spidering up his forearms. A textbook overdose—foaming at the mouth, the acrid smell of vomit, a hypodermic needle still lodged in the crook of his elbow. Uniforms had already taped off the area, their boots crunching on debris. But something was wrong. Quinn approached slowly, her military precision evident in each measured step. She crouched, ignoring the protest of her knees, and studied the needle. The plunger was fully depressed, yes, but the dosage seemed excessive for a man this size, and the positioning—angled too steeply, driven with force rather than the lazy collapse of a user seeking escape. She looked up. "Who found him?" A voice came from the shadows near the platform edge. "Security guard from the market above. Heard the screaming." Eva Kowalski stepped into the dim light, her round glasses reflecting the beam of Quinn's torch. The research assistant clutched her worn leather satchel to her chest as if it were armor, books heavy enough to tilt her posture to the left. She was tucking a curl of red hair behind her left ear—a nervous habit, Quinn noted, third time since she'd arrived. "Screaming," Quinn repeated, standing. "Not typical for an overdose. They usually go quiet." "Yes," Eva said. Her green eyes darted to the body, then away. "He wasn't using, Detective. He was buying." Quinn followed her gaze. The dead man's hands were clenched tight, fingernails broken, bloodied from scratching at the brick. She knelt again, prying the fingers open with gentle pressure. Something small and brass fell into her palm. A compass. It was no larger than a pocket watch, the casing green with verdigris, ancient and pitted. But the face was pristine, etched with protective sigils that caught the torchlight—geometric patterns that seemed to shift when viewed from the corner of the eye. The needle spun wildly, not north, not anywhere fixed, but pointing toward the tunnel's darkness with frantic insistence. Quinn's thumb brushed the casing. The metal was warm, impossibly so, like skin. "A Veil Compass," Eva whispered. She had moved closer, close enough that Quinn could smell the lavender soap and old paper of her. "It points to rifts. Doorways. He was trying to find the Market." "The Veil Market," Quinn said. The words tasted strange. She'd heard rumors, whispers in the department about an underground exchange that moved locations, that required bone tokens for entry. She'd filed them alongside Morris's final report—superstitious nonsense meant to explain away a death that had no logical explanation. But here, in the dark, with a compass needle spinning toward shadows that seemed thicker than they should be, she felt the first crack in her certainty. She searched the body's pockets. No wallet. No phone. But in the jacket lining, stitched into the fabric, she found it—a small token carved from bone, etched with the same sigils as the compass. "He had entry," Quinn said, holding it up. "So why is he dead?" Eva adjusted her glasses. "Because he wasn't buying goods, Detective. He was buying information. And someone didn't want him to share it." Quinn looked at the compass again. The needle had stopped spinning. It pointed now, steady and true, not at the tunnel, but at the body itself. Or rather, at something clutched in the dead man's other hand—a scrap of paper, half-swallowed by his fist. She extracted it carefully. A photograph, blurred and water-damaged, but recognizable. Three men standing in front of a bookshop. One was the victim, younger, smiling. The second was a man Quinn didn't know. The third— She stopped breathing. The third was DS Morris. The date stamp on the corner read three weeks before Morris died. Quinn stood slowly, her military bearing suddenly rigid, her hand closing around the compass until the brass edges bit into her palm. The tunnel stretched before her, dark and patient. Eva was watching her, the research assistant's nervous habit stilled, her green eyes sharp with understanding. "You see it now," Eva said. It wasn't a question. Quinn looked at the compass needle, still pointing toward the photograph, toward a truth she'd spent three years denying. The worn leather of her watch strap creaked as she checked the time. Eleven-fifty-two. "Yes," Quinn said, her voice precise and clean as a blade. "I see it." She stepped over the tape, toward the darkness, the compass warm in her hand like a heartbeat. Behind her, Eva followed, the leather of her satchel creaking with the weight of books and history and things that should not exist but did. The Market had moved locations every full moon for centuries. But tonight, Quinn was going to find it. And this time, she wouldn't look away from what the shadows showed her.