Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQZTXDCM4HGZ7HZD861TSQ

Detective Harlow Quinn ducked beneath the rusted arch where the city’s bones poked out, the abandoned Tube platform yawning ahead with its empty trackbed and damp, echoing hush. Her footsteps marked time against the cracked flagstones, heels clicking—too loud, too regular. She paused, brow furrowed at the oily puddles, the glimmer of rat eyes between shattered tiles. Bleak yellow light from portable halogens turned the sluice-scored air into something colorless and dust-thick. She took in the remnants of the Market: the scent of extinguished incense, the aftertaste of ozone and smoke. Tape cordoned off a scatter of stalls—wet cardboard, shards of fused glass, a ruined velvet display pillow leaking what might be sand or powdered bone. The Market had already vanished, as it always did, but its footprint lingered in the stray psychic charge that raised the fine hairs on her arms. A patrol officer flagged her down, holding out a hand smeared with black grease from the generator. "Detective Quinn? DS Palmer's already down on the tracks. Scene's secure, but you're not gonna like it." He had nervous eyes, darting to places that weren't there. She nodded, flicked her gaze to her own shadow—there, steady weight and outline, no ripple. "Appreciate it, Constable. Don't touch anything else." Her voice, sharp as her jaw, brokered no argument. Past the barrier, DS Palmer crouched beside the rails, suit jacket rumpled, tie loose. His face gleamed with sweat, lost in the forensic lamplight. At his feet: a body, shrouded in a glimmering, iridescent tarpaulin where official kit merged with something not from the usual evidence locker. Palmer’s latex gloves shone ghost-pale. He straightened, exhaling. “Quinn. About time.” She knelt, adjusting the worn leather watch on her wrist—familiar weight, marked and scuffed. The victim was female, late twenties, hair coiled and scorched at the ends, skin oddly translucent at the neck. Her arms, crossed over her chest, clasped a small brass object. Harlow recognized the etching of sigils—protective wards, overwrought and, from the looks of them, done in haste. “Who found her?” Harlow asked. Her tone was short, clipped. “One of the cleaners—routine sweep after lads in blue noticed odd foot traffic on the cameras last night,” Palmer replied. “But look, Harlow—none of this fits a normal break-in or assault. No defensive wounds, no obvious entry or exit. Not unless your local ghosts are getting bolder.” He smirked, but she saw the unease in his hands—kept busy fiddling with his flashlight. Harlow bent closer, scanning the ground. Ash dust blackened the edges of a scorched mark, circular, near the left rail. She touched her gloved finger to the line and felt the buzz of warding magic—fizzling, incomplete. “The Market was here,” she said. Palmer grunted. “So the rumors are true? They actually hawk their tricks here, right under Camden?” “Not tricks.” Harlow’s response was cool, but not dismissive. “Not for the kind of clientele who trade on bone tokens and blood currency.” She nudged the victim’s hands apart, careful not to disturb the compass that lay nestled there—a small brass thing, mottled green in the sickly light. The needle twitched, uncertain, then spun twice before resting, quivering, toward the west wall. Palmer shifted. “Looks like an antique.” “It's a Veil Compass,” Harlow said. “Tracks openings—supernatural rifts. Made by the Shades.” Palmer blinked. “That’s—never mind. She’s not local, according to the ID. Polish passport, no priors, address doesn’t check out. Why here, why now?” Harlow straightened. She scanned for footprints—too many, overlapping, sellers and buyers from the Market jammed close before the dispersal. But the circle near the rail stood out—exclusion zone, scorched, nothing but a faint shimmer glinting where the lamplight caught. “She died protecting this,” Harlow said, nodding at the compass. Palmer leaned in, skepticism plain. “From who? What, a rival dealer? This feels staged. We’re underground, two locked gates, no cameras. Who gets in and out?” Harlow’s eyes, brown and clear beneath the halogen glare, sharpened. “Palmer, who else has the skill to break a Market circle? Who knows how to take down a barrier without triggering every ward in a five-mile radius? This wasn't brute force. It was precise. Military precision.” She didn’t let her mouth tighten, but the words left a bitter film. A sound behind them—soft shoe on gravel, intake of breath—announced a new arrival, small and anxious. Eva Kowalski, hair a frizzed flame beneath the emergency lights, hovered at the edge of the cordon. She hugged her satchel tight. Round glasses flashed. Her eyes, quick and nervous, darted over the scene and landed on Harlow. “Detective Quinn,” she said, voice unsteady. “I heard—well, I read about…the Market moving. Did she—was this…?” Harlow motioned her closer. “Eva Kowalski, right? British Museum’s restricted archives?” Eva nodded, swallowing hard. She fidgeted, tucking a curl behind her ear. “That sigil—it’s a variant on a Silesian ward, very old. Meant to shield not from spirits, but from—well, from people. Human intent.” She dropped her gaze. “Whoever attacked her knew that.” Palmer made a face. “Human or not, someone killed her. Only question now is how.” Harlow drew in the dry station air, registering scents: burnt metal, camphor, and underneath, the faint rank trace of panic. Not the victim’s—Eva. She bent toward the compass. “Palmer, why did you say none of this fits? What are you seeing?” He gestured. “No obvious sign of trauma. Just—here.” He peeled back the tarpaulin at the neck, careful. The skin beneath was marbled blue and green, as if ink had bled from the veins. “I’ve seen nerve agent poisonings,” he said. “This isn’t that. It looks closer to hypoxia, but nothing about the environmental readings matches. Air’s clean. No residue.” Eva tensed. “That’s not chemical burn. It’s spell rebound. If you try to reroute defensive wards and they fail—” She hesitated, voice thin. “It backlashes. The energy displaces the blood. Drowns you from the inside.” Harlow filed that away. She squinted at the compass, noting the faint smear on its housing—less of verdigris, more something sticky. Blood, then, not all her own. And beside the body, tucked out of easy view, lay a small white chip. Harlow fished it up, displaying the scrimshawed bone. A bone token, marked in the Market’s private script. She rolled it in her palm. “She paid someone for protection—or passage. Could be she bought a way out, or thought she did.” Her focus narrowed to the scorched circle. “But whoever came for her had inside knowledge. They stepped over the line, targeted the weak point in her protections.” Palmer was silent a moment, frowning into the shadows. “You think this was a hit? Not some market trade gone wrong?” Harlow shook her head—once, sharp. “This is deliberate. Look at the circle: burnt at one point only, breached from the outside. Whoever broke in knew how to thread the power lines. They didn’t set off any alarms or triggers. That’s not amateur work. That’s someone trained.” Her jaw set, memory flickering—DS Morris, her partner, eyes wild the night he vanished. A circle torn open in just that way. She met Eva’s gaze. “You said Silesian wards defend against human intent. What kind of human?” Eva shifted, clutching the satchel. “The kind who knows what you are, and what you have. The kind who can exploit a trapdoor in the pattern.” Harlow’s mind whirred. The victim bought a Veil Compass, secured Market passage, planned an escape. Someone followed—someone who could twist both the magical and the mundane. She stepped to the circle’s breach, knees popping in protest. There: a faint scuff of boot polish, black as pitch. Not Market folk—wrong style, too rigid. Palmer caught her look. “Find something?” She glanced at him. “Someone came here prepared. Knew the circle layout, wore boots instead of trainers. That’s not a Market runner.” She watched the compass needle—it trembled, trying to point not just to a rift, but to the person who’d forced passage. Palmer ran his hand over his jaw. “An inside job?” Eva’s whisper was near silent: “Or someone with the Market’s trust.” Harlow stood, every sinew coiled. “We need to speak with the Shade crafters. Someone sold her out. Palmer, call in the forensics team—full spectrum, take samples from the circle and the compass. Eva, you stay close.” Palmer nodded and turned away, already on his radio. Eva drifted to Harlow’s elbow, anxious. Harlow looked at the body once more. “She thought rules would save her. But down here, everything’s negotiable—except what you owe.” She palmed the bone token, memorizing its pattern. There was a debt here; she recognized the weight, the flavor of old guilt. Stepping back, she fixed her attention on the platform shadows, the tracks running into further dark. The Market had changed locations, but its secrets clung to bone and brass, and to all those who had thought the supernatural ledger would ever let them go.