Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR2ZF0AK75MENXNV2RQNSB

The Camden Tube station hadn't seen a train in fifteen years. The Metropolitan Police had sealed it after the '09 flooding, and it had stayed sealed—officially. The rust-bright rails stretched into darkness on either side of the platform, a throat leading nowhere. Quinn descended the access ladder with methodical care, her worn leather watch catching the beam of her torch. The metal was slick, and the air tasted of copper and something else. Something organic that made the back of her neck prickle. Behind her, the sounds of the surface team faded to a murmur. The body was exactly where the anonymous tip had said it would be: sprawled across the platform near what had once been a ticket office. Male, mid-fifties, dressed in an expensive charcoal suit that was worth more than most people's monthly rent. His left arm was twisted beneath him at an angle that suggested either extreme violence or extreme dedication to an alibi. The back of his skull had met something hard enough to crack bone. Quinn crouched beside the body, her knees protesting. Forty-one was creeping up too fast, or maybe it was just the weight of three years that made her feel ancient. Three years since Morris had walked into that warehouse in Bermondsey. Three years of officially unsolved. "Detective Quinn." The voice came from behind her, cheerful and incongruous with the corpse. "Bit of a mess, innit?" Eva Kowalski stood at the platform's far end, her curly red hair escaping from a hasty ponytail, round glasses reflecting Quinn's torch. She wore what looked like borrowed police-issue coveralls over her museum work clothes. The girl—woman, technically, though Quinn still thought of her as the girl—held a leather satchel clutched to her chest like a shield. "What are you doing down here?" Quinn said, not bothering to hide the irritation in her voice. "And more importantly, how are you down here? This is a secured scene." "DS Price called me." Eva pushed her glasses up her nose, a nervous gesture Quinn had seen a hundred times. "He said there was something odd about the body, and I might be useful. Given my expertise." "Your expertise in what, exactly? You're a museum researcher, not a pathologist." "No, but I know things about—" Eva stopped, tucked her hair behind her left ear. A tell. She was lying. Or hiding something. Same thing in Quinn's experience. "I know things about the unusual. DS Price thought I might notice details you'd miss." Quinn stood, her joints crackling. Price. Of course. The younger detective had always been too willing to venture off the straight path, and that was putting it generously. In the past six months, he'd taken an unusual interest in the fringe cases, the ones that didn't fit standard operating procedure. The ones that smelled wrong. "Show me what you think is unusual," Quinn said, watching Eva's reaction carefully. Eva set her satchel down and moved to the body with surprising confidence. She crouched on the opposite side from where Quinn had been examining him, and her green eyes traced the pattern of blood spatter on the concrete. "The impact pattern," Eva said quietly. "It's wrong for a fall from the platform. See how it radiates? That's consistent with horizontal blunt force trauma, not vertical impact. But here's the thing—" She pointed to the corpse's right hand, which lay open and empty. "There's defensive bruising on his knuckles. Recent. And the wound on his head? Single impact. Clean. Professional." Quinn had already noted those details. She'd also noted the lack of weapon, the sealed station, and the complete absence of any sign of forced entry beyond the mysterious tip. What interested her was how Eva knew them. "How long have you been consulting with the Met?" Quinn asked. "I haven't. This is the first—" Eva caught herself. "This is the first time DS Price has called me in." Another lie. Quinn could taste it, acrid on her tongue like burnt sugar. "You're connected to the Veil Market." Eva's hands stilled. She didn't look up at Quinn, just kept her gaze fixed on the corpse's twisted arm. The hesitation lasted three seconds too long. "I don't know what you're talking about," Eva said. "Bone tokens, midnight auctions, enchanted compasses that point toward rifts instead of magnetic north. I may not know all the details, but I know enough to recognize the pattern. And I know that Victoria died three years ago for knowing too much about things that don't fit neatly into case files." Eva's head snapped up. "DS Morris?" "Detective Sergeant Victoria Morris," Quinn said flatly. "My partner. She walked into something she didn't understand, and it killed her. The case was closed as an accident. It wasn't." For the first time, Eva looked genuinely frightened. She scrambled backward, away from the body, and Quinn let her move. Control came in knowing when to apply pressure and when to let the rope go slack. "This man," Eva said, her voice smaller now. "Do you know who he is?" "Not yet. Fingerprints will take time. ID wasn't on the body." "His name was Marcus Thorne. He was a broker. For the Market." Eva swallowed hard. "He worked both sides—human and otherwise. He specialized in moving merchandise that shouldn't exist and making people who asked questions disappear." "Merchandise like enchanted compasses." "Among other things." Eva retrieved her satchel and pulled out a leather journal, the pages crammed with handwritten notes and sketches that made Quinn's eyes water to look at. Sigils. Runes. Things that predated any language she recognized. "I've been researching the black markets for two years. Real research, not just curiosity. Because Victoria Morris wasn't the only one who died under unclear circumstances. There are others. Seven in the past five years. All connected to investigations that didn't make sense." Quinn felt something shift in her chest, a tectonic shift of relief and dread grinding together. "Where did you get this?" "From the restricted archives. And from sources Price introduced me to. He's been trying to build a case against the Market for months, but he can't do it alone. He needed an expert, someone who understood the underlying mechanics. That's where I came in." Quinn looked back at the body of Marcus Thorne, at the single wound on his skull, the professional execution of it. Someone had wanted him dead badly enough to risk a sealed Tube station. Someone who knew him well enough to get close. Someone who understood the world he inhabited. "Tell me everything," Quinn said. "And don't leave anything out this time. Because Victoria Morris deserves better than an accident report, and so do those other seven people." Eva nodded, her fingers still trembling as she opened her journal. The darkness of the abandoned station seemed to deepen around them, as though the walls themselves were listening. Somewhere in that darkness, Quinn felt certain, there were answers. And behind those answers, something far larger and far more dangerous than anything the Metropolitan Police had encountered before.