Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR68K7CS82BRR6Z64V7XP7

The air tasted of damp concrete and ozone, a flavour Detective Harlow Quinn associated with death in the city’s forgotten corners. Below the thrum of Camden, the abandoned Aldwych branch station was a tomb of peeling posters and Victorian tilework. Forensic lights blanched the grime, casting long, dancing shadows that clung to the arched columns like ghosts. DC Hayes stood near the platform edge, his shoulders hunched inside his oversized coat. He was young, eager, and saw the world in straight, predictable lines. “Ma’am,” he said, his breath fogging in the subterranean chill. “Victim was found by a tube maintenance crew doing a line inspection.” Quinn’s gaze swept the scene with military precision, cataloguing details before her eyes even settled on the body. The dust on the platform was thick, disturbed by a single set of tracks leading from a service tunnel, and the chaotic boot prints of the first responders and her own team. No sign of a struggle. No scattered belongings. Just the oppressive silence of a place that had been sealed off from the world for decades. She moved toward the source of the light, her polished shoes crunching softly on the grit. The victim was propped against the tiled wall, sitting on the cold floor as if she’d simply decided to rest for a moment. Her curly red hair was a splash of vibrant colour in the monochrome decay. Round glasses were perched on her nose, slightly askew. A smattering of freckles stood out on skin that was waxy and pale. Quinn recognized the unnerving stillness of a body that hadn’t been moved post-mortem. Eva Kowalski. Twenty-six. A research assistant at the British Museum. “Cause of death?” Quinn asked, crouching down but not touching anything. “That’s the thing,” Hayes said, joining her. “Forensics can’t find one. No lividity where there should be. No obvious trauma, no ligature marks, no entry wounds. It’s like she just… switched off.” Quinn’s eyes narrowed. She had seen this once before. Three years ago. A different disused building, a different victim. Her partner, DS Morris. The memory was a cold shard of glass under her skin. She forced it down, focusing on the here and now. “Toxicology?” “Rushed it. Came back clean. No poisons, no narcotics. Zilch.” Hayes gestured vaguely at the cavernous space. “Theory is maybe some kind of gas pocket? Bad air? But the maintenance crew was down here for an hour before they found her and they’re fine.” Quinn’s gaze fell on the worn leather satchel by the young woman’s side. It was open. A few heavy, leather-bound books spilled out, their pages filled with what looked like hand-drawn diagrams and archaic script. Not a mugging, then. A mugger would have taken the bag or at least rifled through it with more purpose. She looked at Eva’s hands. They rested in her lap, palms up. Her fingers were curled slightly, not in a death spasm, but loosely, as if she’d just let something go. Something was tucked behind her left ear. Not a flower. A stray curl of that fiery red hair. A nervous habit, the file had said. Quinn looked closer at the victim’s face. Behind the glasses, her green eyes were open, staring at the vaulted ceiling. They weren't clouded with the terror of a violent end. They held a look of profound, vacant surprise. “She doesn’t look like she was meeting a dealer, Hayes,” Quinn said, her voice quiet but carrying in the echoing space. She glanced at the worn leather watch on her own wrist. Time of death was estimated four hours ago. Just before midnight. “Could have been a meet for… information? Something illegal?” Hayes offered, trying to fit the scene into a box he understood. “These old tunnels, they’re used for all sorts of things. Raves, smuggling.” Quinn didn’t answer. Her attention was snagged by a glint of metal near Eva’s outstretched foot. It was small, half-hidden in the grime. She motioned to a forensics tech. “Bag that. Carefully.” The tech knelt, tweezers flashing in the harsh light. He deposited the object into an evidence bag and handed it to her. It was a compass. Small, made of brass, with a patina of green verdigris mottling its surface. It was heavy in her gloved hand, solid. But the face was all wrong. Instead of cardinals, the rim was etched with a series of interlocking sigils she didn’t recognize. There was no glass cover. At its center, a single, needle-thin sliver of dark, polished metal spun erratically, a frantic, silent dance that seemed entirely disconnected from magnetic north. “Some kind of antique,” Hayes commented, peering over her shoulder. “Probably picked it up at the market upstairs. Just a bit of tourist tat.” Quinn turned the compass over in her palm. The back was smooth, save for a single, complex mark that looked like a stylized key. It felt cool to the touch, unnaturally so. She remembered the file. Eva Kowalski wasn’t a tourist. Master’s in Ancient History from Oxford. Access to the British Museum's restricted archives. An occult researcher. A woman like that wouldn’t carry tourist tat. A tool, then. But for what? Her gaze lifted from the strange object and scanned the air in front of the body. She took a step forward, then another. The chill in the station wasn't uniform. Right here, about five feet in front of where Eva sat, the air was degrees colder. A pocket of deep cold that had no source. Her breath plumed more thickly. She could feel the static on her skin, the fine hairs on her arms standing on end. “Ma’am?” Hayes asked, a note of concern in his voice. Quinn held up a hand for silence. She watched the compass in her palm. The needle’s chaotic spinning intensified, a blur of motion. It wasn’t pointing at anything. It was reacting to something. Something right here, in this empty space. She thought of Morris. The way they’d found him. Sitting in a chair in that abandoned warehouse, looking out a window that had no glass. No wounds. No poison. Just that same look of vacant surprise. The coroner had called it a catastrophic coronary event. A heart attack. Quinn had never believed it. There had been a compass in his pocket, too. An ordinary one, its needle shattered. At the time, she hadn't understood. Now, she was beginning to. “She wasn’t waiting for a person, Hayes,” Quinn said, her voice low. She looked from the empty, cold space in the air to the victim. “She was waiting for a place.” Hayes blinked. “A place? Ma’am, we’re in it.” “No.” Quinn looked down at Eva’s hands again, at the faint traces of crystalline dust on her open palms, a residue forensics had likely missed, assuming it was just part of the station’s grime. “She came here with her books and her tools. She sat down, and she opened something. A door. A gate. A… rift.” The word sounded alien on her tongue, but it felt right. “This compass doesn’t point north. It points toward things like that.” She held up the evidence bag. The needle inside was a frantic, silent propeller. Hayes stared at her, his face a mask of polite confusion. He was a good detective, but his world was made of brick and motive and human failing. He couldn’t see the impossible geometry of the scene. “A rift? With all due respect, Detective, that sounds—” “I know what it sounds like,” Quinn cut in, her tone sharp as flint. “But look at her. Look at this place. Does any of this add up to a simple murder? There are no footprints but her own leading to that spot. There are no signs of a second party. She died of fright, the coroner will probably say. Her heart just gave out. And everyone will accept it, because the alternative is too difficult to write in a report.” Quinn’s jaw was a hard line. She saw the shape of it now. Eva Kowalski hadn’t been murdered. She had been looking for something. Using this Veil Compass, she had found it. She had opened a door that should have remained shut. And whatever was on the other side had looked back. It hadn't needed to touch her. All it had to do was show itself. She slipped the evidence bag into her coat pocket, an immediate and deliberate breach of protocol. This was hers now. This was Morris’s case, reopened after three years of cold, gnawing uncertainty. “Get forensics to sweep her hands for any non-native particulates,” Quinn ordered, her voice regaining its authoritative clip. “And I want every book from that satchel photographed, page by page. Get a specialist from the museum to translate the text if you have to. I don’t care if it’s gibberish. I want to know what she was reading.” Hayes nodded, scrambling to jot down the notes, the professional in him overriding the sceptic. “And the cause of death, ma’am? What do I put in the preliminary?” Quinn looked one last time at the young woman with the brilliant red hair, a scholar who had ventured too far into the footnotes of history. The compass in her pocket felt heavy, a cold weight of responsibility. “For now,” Quinn said, turning away from the body and heading back toward the stairs that led to the sane, sunlit world, “we’ll call it death by misadventure.”