Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR149X1SR2WWAWY22E2ZRZ

The air in the abandoned Northern Line station tasted of rust and ancient water, a damp, metallic breath that had been trapped in the tunnel for decades. Detective Harlow Quinn adjusted her grip on her Maglite, the beam cutting a jagged path through the murk. The only sound was the rhythmic dripping from a fissure in the overhead concrete, counting down the hours. Eighteen years in the Met, and she had seen many terrible things. She had seen stab wounds, gunshot fractures, and the aftermath of improvised explosives that tore flesh like wet paper. But nothing in her career had prepared her for the absolute, suffocating *wrongness* of this particular crime scene. The ticket barriers were shattered, spilling plastic shards over the grime-stained tiles. But the attacker hadn't used force to get in. They hadn't kicked the doors down, and they hadn't pried the gates. The breach looked surgical. It was a clean, deliberate rent in the barrier, as if the metal had simply ceased to exist for a heartbeat before being pushed aside. "Quinn." The voice was a low, anxious whisper. Harlow didn't turn immediately. She stepped over the line of yellow police tape, her boots crunching on the dead leaves that had settled on the platform. Eva Kowalski was standing near the far end of the platform, hunched over. Her curly red hair was escaping from its usual ponytail, framing her face in a chaotic halo that seemed at odds with the gruesome tableau before them. She wore her familiar round glasses, which were now misted over. "Evie," Harlow said, keeping her voice level despite the tightening knot in her stomach. "I told you not to come down here until I processed the scene." "It’s a rift, Harlow." Eva stepped forward, her movements jerky, a nervous habit manifesting as she tugged a strand of auburn hair behind her left ear. "I can smell it. Ozone and something… elder." Harlow swept her light over the body lying near the ticket alcove. It was a man, dressed in a tacky double-breasted suit that screamed 'getaway driver' or 'low-level fence.' His hands were clasped over his chest, his eyes wide and fixed on the darkness above the platform. "He's dead," Harlow said simply. "Suicide?" Eva didn't answer immediately. She approached, kneeling on the dirty floor, ignoring the grime. She reached out with a gloved hand, hovering it inches from the man's cheek. "No fluids. No bruising. The coroner will find nothing. He didn't have a heart attack, and he wasn't stabbed." Harlow crouched beside her, her breath hitching. She shone her light into the dead man’s face. The eyes were dilated, pupils blown wide. "Then what the hell happened?" "Magic," Eva breathed, though she sounded hesitant. "I don't know *what* kind, but it’s a contracted termination. A hit." Harlow stood up abruptly, the hardness returning to her features. She checked her left wrist, tapping the face of her worn leather watch. 02:14 AM. The full moon was just hours away. "Magic isn't admissible in court, Eva. And the M.O.? There's no weapon. No forced entry. It looks like he just… crumbled." "It’s the Veil," Eva said, standing up and brushing dust from her knees. "This isn't just an abandoned station. It’s a waypoint. The Market shifts tonight." Harlow stiffened. She hated when Evie went full academic, especially when they were standing over a corpse. "The Market is a pawn shop, Evie. A black market for stolen goods and second-hand electronics. We're looking for a murder, not a supernatural anomaly." "Look at the reflection." Harlow turned her light to the floor. Halfway across the platform, beneath a flickering overhead light, she saw the man's reflection in the wet tiles. But the man in the reflection wasn't lying down. He was standing. It was a trick of the light, she told herself. The angle, the distortion. "No," Eva said softly. "That's the tether." Harlow stepped closer, her gut twisting. "How do you figure?" "Look at the compass," Eva said, pointing to the object nestled in the pocket of Harlow’s jacket. Evie had insisted Harlow bring it earlier, trading the Veil Compass for a lead on a stolen relic. It had felt like charity at the time, a warm, brass gift from a market vendor with too many teeth. Harlow unclasped the chain and pulled out the small brass instrument. The casing had a beautiful patina of verdigris, the greenish corrosion softening the edges of the protective sigils etched into the face. She held it up. The needle, usually steady, was vibrating. It wasn't just pointing north; it was dancing, spinning rapidly in a circle before latching onto a specific angle—up. "It points up?" Harlow asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Deep up," Eva corrected. "Between the layers. There's a tear in reality here. The bullet didn't miss its mark, Quinn. The mark was outside reality." Harlow looked back at the body. "So you're saying a gunman shot him from a dimension we can't see?" "I'm saying the 'gunman' was a spell. A killing curse delivered from beyond the veil." Eva stepped closer, her nose wrinkling as the smell of the station seemed to intensify. "He didn't bleed because his blood wasn't anchored to this plane anymore when the spell released him. It’s why the reflection is wrong. He’s still being pulled apart in another world." Harlow closed her eyes for a second, recalling her partner, DS Morris. He had died three years ago. A "friendly fire" incident, they said. The bullet had gone through his chest, but there had been no exit wound. Just a hole and heat, like a cigarette burn on a mattress. The compass needle stopped vibrating, snapping to a violent snap to the northeast, toward the tracks. "The attacker," Harlow realized, the realization cold and sharp. "They didn't leave. They're still here." "How?" Eva asked, her voice trembling. "In the shadows," Harlow said, rising to her full height of five-foot-nine. She adjusted the hem of her trench coat, her posture shifting from investigative observer to predator. "The bloodless kill. The reflection. The Veil shifting." She looked at Eva, her brown eyes scanning her friend’s face for fear. "You were right. This is the Market." Suddenly, the lights flickered. Not just a dimming, but a violent strobe, dying and rekindling with a hum that vibrated in Harlow’s teeth. The air pressure dropped, the stale air of the station suddenly heavy, like breathing underwater. "Harlow?" Eva stepped back, bumping into a rack of old metro maps that hadn't been touched in decades. The rack swayed. "Stay behind me," Harlow commanded. She pulled her service weapon, though she knew it was likely useless against a entity that operated on a different physics. She moved toward the northeast, toward the tracks. The needle on the compass was pulsing, a small brass heartbeat matching the thrumming of the electricity in the walls. There, in the darkness where the two tunnels met, a shape coalesced. It wasn't a man. It was a shadow without a solid form, manifesting from the wet tiles and the rust. It was a Shade artisan. Its features were indistinct, melting like candle wax in a draft, but it held something in its hand. A vial? No, a blade made of condensed shadow. Harlow raised her gun. "Freeze!" The figure didn't stop. It moved with impossible speed, faster than a human eye could track. But Harlow was a cop. She had seen things others couldn't process; her mind refused to let the impossible slide. She squeezed the trigger. *BANG.* The shot echoed like a cannon blast, deafening in the confined space. The bullet struck the creature, passing through it as if it were smoke. It didn't bleed. It didn't recoil. But the impact was enough. The creature shrieked—a sound that wasn't made by vocal cords, but by the air itself stretching thin—and dissolved into a cloud of black ash that swirled around the platform. Harlow lowered her gun, breathing hard. She watched the ash settle on the concrete floor. The needle on the compass, still in her hand, snapped back to pointing straight up. "Did you see that?" Eva whispered from behind her, her voice shaking. Harlow looked back at the body of the fence on the platform. It was changing. The pristine suit was beginning to fray, and the reflection in the water pooled on the ground was finally catching up with the reality. Blood, dark and thick, began to well up from the empty sockets of the corpse. "He's falling back," Harlow said, horror in her voice. "The magic is retreating." Eva rushed to the body, dropping to her knees. "He's… he's going to wake up." "It’s too late for that," Harlow said, holstering her weapon. She felt the cold sweat prickle on her neck. She grabbed Eva’s arm, hauling her to her feet. "We need to get out of here. The Market is closing. It won't be safe until the veil stabilizes." Eva grabbed her satchel, her glasses sliding down her nose. "What about the body? And the evidence?" "We file a report," Harlow said, her voice steel-glinting. "We say it was a gas leak. Or a structural collapse. We don't tell them about the shadow-man with the compass that points to hell." Eva looked at the compass, then at the tunnel mouth where the ash was beginning to clear. "A gas leak," she repeated, a ghost of a smile touching her lips. "I suppose that works. For now." Harlow turned, her boots crunching over the broken barriers, leading the way toward the ladder that led back to the surface. She didn't look back. She had 18 years of service to account for, and the world was getting stranger every day. She needed to be ready for whatever came next.