Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQTBB36Z1R4EYS604X2G8D

The abandoned Tube station smelled like decades of rust and stagnant water. Detective Harlow Quinn descended the crumbling platform stairs with methodical precision, her worn leather watch catching on the concrete railing. The beam of her torch cut through the darkness, illuminating decades of graffiti and the chalk outline of a body that was no longer there. DC Sarah Chen stood near the tracks, wearing the careful expression of someone who'd already spent three hours at a crime scene and wasn't sure what she was looking at anymore. She glanced up as Quinn approached, relief flickering across her face. "Thought you might want to see this before we seal it up," Chen said. "The body was found by some teenagers exploring at half past nine last night. Uniform responded, called it in at ten-fifteen." Quinn crouched beside the outline, her knees protesting with the kind of ache that came from forty-one years and too many crime scenes. The chalk was fresh, the measurements precise. She studied the placement—the body had been positioned with feet toward the tunnels, arms at its sides. Deliberate. Arranged. "ID?" Quinn asked. "None on him. No wallet, no phone, nothing. Still waiting on forensics to get back with dental records, but preliminary assessment suggests male, late twenties to early thirties, approximately six feet tall." Quinn stood, her eyes tracing the platform. The usual detritus of urban exploration lay scattered about—empty cans, a shoe with no mate, a tangle of something that might have once been clothing. But there were other things too. Her detective's eye caught them immediately. "The chalk line includes defensive wounds on the hands," Chen continued. "Victim fought back. We found some trace evidence—hair fibers, possible skin under the fingernails. There's also this." Chen guided her to a spot about three meters from the body outline. Arranged in the dust and debris was a pattern. Not quite deliberate enough to be obvious, but deliberate enough that Quinn's internal alarm began to sound. It was a circle. Rough, broken in places, but unmistakably a circle. Inside it, something had been drawn with what looked like ash or powdered bone. Quinn couldn't quite make out the symbols—they were too degraded, smudged by footprints and time. "Might be nothing," Chen offered, reading her silence. "Could've been there for months. Could be unrelated." Quinn disagreed, though she didn't say so yet. In eighteen years of decorated service, she'd learned that coincidence was the laziest explanation a detective could reach for. She photographed the circle with her personal camera, then knelt closer, careful not to disturb the pattern further. The symbols were wrong. Not like gang tags or the sort of crude drawings teenagers left in forgotten places. These had precision despite their degradation. Intention. The same intention she recognized in how the body had been positioned. She pulled out a small notebook from her jacket pocket, the leather soft from years of use. Without touching anything, she sketched what she could see: a broken circle, the fragments of symbols inside. Curves and angles that suggested something systemic. Something organized. "There's more," Chen said quietly. She held out an evidence bag. Inside was a small object, roughly the size of a woman's hand, crafted from brass. Even through the plastic, Quinn could see the patina of verdigris on its surface, the delicate work of the casing. The face of it was etched with symbols—not crude, but intricate. Professional. A compass. Quinn's chest tightened. She took the bag without touching it, held it up to the fluorescent work lights that uniform had set up around the crime scene. The needle didn't point north. It wasn't pointing anywhere in particular now—it swung slowly, as if searching. "Found it about two meters from the body," Chen said. "Tucked into a crack in the platform edge, like someone tried to hide it. Had to be the killer—no reason a victim would position it there." Quinn's mind moved through the possibilities, each one clicking into place with a certainty that made her skin prickle. This wasn't a mugging gone wrong. This wasn't a gang initiation or a deal that turned violent. This was something else entirely. Something she'd hoped, three years after DS Morris disappeared, that she'd never have to face again. "Has anyone else been down here?" Quinn asked. "Besides uniform and the teenagers?" "Just us. I secured the scene immediately when I arrived. Why?" Quinn didn't answer immediately. She was looking at the pattern again, at how the chalk line suggested a body that had been positioned with care, almost reverence. She was thinking about Morris, about how he'd vanished from a secured building with no signs of forced entry or exit. About the way his case file had been closed before she could ask the right questions. "The defensive wounds," Quinn said. "Exact locations?" Chen consulted her notes. "Hands, forearms, one significant laceration on the right shoulder. Looks like he was fighting someone armed—knife, probably. The medical examiner suggested the blade was unusual. Didn't create a typical wound pattern." Unusual. That was one word for it. Quinn straightened, her jaw tightening with the kind of certainty that came from experience and dread in equal measure. She looked at Chen—young, capable, but with the untested confidence of someone who still believed the world operated according to rational rules. "This wasn't a street robbery," Quinn said. "The positioning, the circle, the compass—this was ritual. Someone brought this victim here deliberately. They fought, maybe tried to escape, but they lost. And whoever did this..." She paused, considering how much to say. "They knew exactly what they were doing." "Ritual," Chen repeated slowly. "You think this is... what, some kind of cult killing?" Quinn studied the compass again, the way its needle moved without direction, searching. She thought about her options. She could hand this over to the occult crimes task force—a unit that officially didn't exist but that she'd had to contact once before, three years ago, in the aftermath of Morris's disappearance. She could pretend this was straightforward and let the case slip away, unsolved and rationalized into comfortable ambiguity. Or she could do what she'd sworn to do when she made detective: follow the evidence wherever it led. "Get everything catalogued and bagged," Quinn said. "And Chen? Keep the compass secure. Personal custody—don't let it go to standard evidence lockup." "Why? What is it?" Quinn looked at her colleague, measuring how much the truth would help or hurt. "Something from a part of this city most people don't know exists," she said finally. "And if I'm right, we've just opened a door we're not going to be able to close." She pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts until she found the number she'd hoped she'd never have to call again. She'd made it two years—two years of relative quiet, of bodies that made sense, of crimes with rational explanations. That quiet was over.