Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR2QRYN12Q6WQBNTBJR3NK

Detective Harlow Quinn ducked beneath a drooping length of yellow police tape, mindful of rust flakes clinging to the archway overhead. Her boots landed with a hollow echo on the stone platform—old rails and ancient shadows folding in close like conspirators. She paused, knuckles brushing the face of her worn leather watch out of habit. The time didn't match the mood here, where sunlight had never touched the cracked tiling and every shiver of air tasted faintly of copper. Behind her, a handful of uniforms milled about in the dusk-hued gloom, high-visibility jackets gleaming like fish in a hidden cave. The abandoned Tube station beneath Camden—condemned, officially sealed, yet buzzing with illicit rumor—was not the typical theatre for a murder scene. Quinn’s silhouette, tall and crisp with military precision, seemed almost to rebuke the untidiness of the place. The scene itself unraveled farther down the platform. Light pooled from a pair of halogen work lamps, illuminating a body sprawled beside a toppled wooden crate. The corpse, male, mid-twenties at best, his face fixed in an expression of surprise. Blood, too little for the wound in the side of his neck, had dried in a Rorschach blot on the stone. A slender woman, red curls frizzing under the strain of humidity and stress, crouched beside the corpse. Round glasses slipped down her freckled nose as she rifled gloved fingers through a soggy sheaf of receipts. Eva Kowalski—aurora’s childhood friend, but tonight just another witness with too much to say. She glanced up, anxiety flickering in green eyes. "Detective Quinn, the—uh—I was… I mean, I found him. Like this." Quinn took in the nervous tuck as Eva slid a curl behind her left ear. She nodded but did not offer comfort. "You said you were here for research. For the British Museum?" "Yes." Eva’s voice cracked. "I was supposed to meet… someone, to collect a folio for the archives." She was clutching her satchel to her chest, leather edges nibbled by use. "He didn't show. Then I heard—well, I found him." A stocky constable, Choudhury, sidled over, pad in hand. "Detective, ME’s on her way—though God knows how she’ll get through that rat-warren. Found no ID. Just this." He dumped a small brass object into a sterile evidence bag. The compass’s casing glimmered dull green-blue under the lights; its face, etched with strange sigils, glinted. Quinn studied it, her gaze settling on the ornate protective runes. She felt the urge to turn it over, but resisted. "Where exactly did you find this?" "On the body. Clutched in his right hand." Quinn narrowed her eyes, gaze tracking details. The corpse’s fingers were curled, stained brass marking the palm. His left sleeve, though, retained a faint crescent-shaped patch—as though he often wore a watch, now missing. "Gloves when moving him, Choudhury," she said. "I want a print lift from both hands. Don’t assume the hand holding the compass is the one that usually does." "Already done, ma’am." Eva hovered, shifting her weight. "Should I… leave?" "You’ll stay until uniform takes your statement." Quinn’s tone left no room for argument. She stepped closer to the body, lowering herself on her haunches, ignoring the protest in her knees. At this angle, the wound opened before her—slit cleanly, just below the jaw, but not deep enough to kill outright unless something else intervened. There were no defensive wounds on the hands. His pockets had been turned out, but not ransacked. A phone, cheap burner, lay near the boot, screen spiderwebbed. Quinn reached for it with a gloved hand and thumbed the power. No signal. Choudhury nodded toward the far end of the platform, where a blur of motion indicated officers inspecting a battered iron gate. "Sergeant thinks perp escaped through there." Quinn followed his line of sight. The gate led not out, but deeper underground. Her lips thinned. "Record says this station’s been sealed for three decades. Who keeps a lock that new on a door that old?" She stepped past him, scanning for footprints in the patchy dust. Too many to count; but one set, booted, had tracked a grainy lime residue peculiar to the platform edge, then stopped abruptly half a meter from the body. She knelt again, nose wrinkling at the scent—alchemical, not chemical; sharper, almost mossy. Her gaze caught on a faint partition line on the stone, a groove as thin as a shoelace. She pressed a gloved finger along its length. The groove circled the entire crate like a warding boundary. The crate itself was fragrant with sandalwood, battered but once expensive. No shipping labels. "Did anyone see the crate moved?" Quinn asked, louder. A PC in the shadows replied, "No, ma’am—we found it overturned." Inside the crate, nothing but a layer of silt, black and faintly iridescent. She scraped a bit into a baggie. "Send this to the lab," she said. "Test for organic and inorganic traces. Prioritize for supernatural markers." Choudhury frowned. "With respect, ma’am—is that necessary? Looks like a mugging gone bad, if you ask me." Quinn straightened, eyeing the sprawling scene. "Does it? There’s barely a minute’s worth of blood. No splatter, no drag marks. Too neat. And our victim—" Her hand floated over the body’s shoulder, pointing at three neat punctures beneath the left clavicle, spaced just so. Eva inhaled sharply; Quinn caught her reaction. "Something wrong, Miss Kowalski?" Eva’s voice was small. "Those marks… I’ve seen them before. On a case file. Medieval, actually—records of illegal dueling, um, with enchanted implements." She bit her lip; Quinn stored the note away. "Thank you." Quinn’s gaze swept the rest of the scene—lamplight, dust, old advertising boards for War-era musicals, corners thick with darkness. She thought of her partner, Morris, and the London night three years lost—of wounds that did not close and explanations that didn’t fit statistics or training manuals. The back of her neck prickled. "Anything else on the compass?" she asked, addressing Choudhury. "Odd thing, ma’am. Needle spins when we bring metal close, but if you stand three paces west, it points hard north and won’t budge." He shrugged. Quinn accepted the evidence bag, turning the compass with care. The sigils, though scuffed, were unmistakable protection wards—old, possibly Shade craft, the kind one saw in seized Veil Market contraband. Quinn narrowed her eyes at the sergeant’s earlier assumption. "You think this is a straightforward mugging, Choudhury?" He shrugged. "Looks that way. No wallet, faint trace of struggle, no witnesses. Camden’s full of desperate sorts. Maybe something more exotic, but—" "But the facts don’t fit." Quinn’s voice carried, clipped and certain. "Look here—our victim came through that entrance, alone. He stops by the crate. No sign of forced entry, so he knew how to get in. He’s not here by accident. Nor are you, Miss Kowalski." Quinn fixed Eva in her gaze; the younger woman wilted slightly. "You said you were meeting someone. A seller?" "Yes," Eva whispered. "They used only first names. I never saw a face." "And the bone token?" Quinn raised an eyebrow. Eva startled. "I—how did you—" She clamped her lips shut. Quinn waited. The silence stretched until Eva surrendered, reaching into her satchel and producing a slim, pale token, etched with the same sigils as the compass. Quinn took it, weighing it in her palm; it was warm despite the chill. "The Veil Market," Quinn muttered. "No simple mugging, then." Her voice was iron. From the edge of the lamplight, the sound of a far door slamming echoed up the tunnel—too loud, too deliberate, not just the settling bones of this place. Quinn’s eyes cut to Choudhury. "Seal every exit. Now." Choudhury moved, barking orders. The uniforms scattered, boots pounding against flagstones. Quinn crouched once more by the corpse, thoughts winding tighter. The compass, the token, the crate’s inlaid ward, the occult signatures—these were not accidents. The crime was a message, or perhaps a ritual interrupted. Someone wanted something moved through the Market beneath London, and someone else had paid for it with their throat. But the evidence here was incomplete, curated—a staging. She saw now what others missed: the blood was pooled, not thrown; the phone tossed too far from a dying hand; the absence of a watch left an unacknowledged tan line. Someone had taken only what they feared others might recognize. Only magic or madness could cleave a man so cleanly, or leave him so bereft of life and legend both. Quinn’s jaw set. She closed the evidence bag around the compass, careful not to break the seal. "The story’s wrong," she said to the air, to Eva, to her own memory of things lost beneath London. "And I intend to write the true one."