Run: 2026-02-17-01KHN1QTP7NVRNR2PG7CZX953S

The stench hit Detective Harlow Quinn before she'd descended halfway down the rusted maintenance ladder. Not the usual cocktail of decay and neglect that characterized London's abandoned Underground tunnels, but something else—ozone mixed with burnt copper, like the air after lightning strikes too close. Her worn leather watch caught on the ladder rung, and she paused to readjust it, buying herself a moment to survey the scene below. The old Camden tube station spread out beneath her in a maze of crumbling platforms and defunct railway lines, lit by harsh police floods that cast everything in stark relief. Crime scene tape fluttered in the artificial breeze created by the ventilation fans someone had hauled down here. "About time, Quinn." Sergeant Mills looked up from his notebook, his face pale in the harsh lighting. "Thought you might want to see this before the scene gets trampled by half the Met." She dropped the final few feet to the platform, her boots echoing in the cavernous space. Eighteen years on the force, and she'd never worked a crime scene quite like this. The victim lay sprawled near what had once been the ticket office, arms flung wide as if he'd been dancing. No visible wounds, no blood pooling on the grimy tiles. Just a middle-aged man in an expensive suit, face frozen in an expression of absolute terror. "Thomas Aldrich, forty-three," Mills read from his notes. "Investment banker, lives in Kensington. Wife reported him missing two days ago when he didn't come home from work." Quinn knelt beside the body, careful not to disturb the scene. The man's eyes were wide open, pupils dilated to pinpricks despite the underground gloom. His fingers were curled into claws, as if he'd been grasping at something that wasn't there. "Cause of death?" "That's the thing." Mills shifted uncomfortably. "Coroner's preliminary says heart failure. Complete cardiac arrest. But Quinn, this bloke was a marathon runner. Clean bill of health, no history of heart problems." She stood, brushing dust from her knees, and surveyed the wider scene. The abandoned platform stretched into darkness beyond the flood lights, its Victorian ironwork twisted into grotesque shadows on the tunnel walls. But something nagged at her, a detail that didn't fit the tidy narrative Mills was constructing. "How exactly did Mr. Aldrich end up down here?" Quinn asked, running her finger along the edge of a nearby pillar. The surface came away gritty, but underneath the grime, she felt something else—a texture that seemed almost warm to the touch. "Working theory is he was dumped. Killer brings him down here thinking the body won't be found for months, maybe years." "Then explain this." Quinn pointed to the victim's shoes—expensive leather oxfords, but the soles were caked with the distinctive reddish clay that marked certain areas of Hampstead Heath. "This mud is fresh, Mills. Hours old, not days. And look at the pattern." Mills leaned closer, squinting at the footwear. "What am I supposed to be seeing?" "The wear pattern. These aren't the shoes of a man who was carried. He walked here under his own power." Quinn straightened, her sharp jaw set in concentration. "More than that—he ran here. Look at the scuff marks on the toes, the way the heel is worn on the outside edge. Classic panic sprint." She began to pace the platform, her military bearing evident in every precise step. The pieces weren't fitting together, and after three years of cases that seemed to slip through her fingers like smoke, she'd learned to trust the itch between her shoulder blades that said something was deeply wrong. "Sergeant, when was this section of tunnel sealed off?" Mills flipped through his notes. "According to Transport for London, 1952. Been abandoned ever since." "Then tell me how our victim managed to get past three levels of security barriers, navigate a maze of tunnels in complete darkness, and end up precisely here without so much as a torch or mobile phone light?" The silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant drip of water somewhere in the tunnels. Mills opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again, his confidence visibly wavering. Quinn crouched near the body again, this time focusing on the victim's left hand. The fingers were stained with something dark, and when she looked closer, she could make out what appeared to be symbols scratched into the concrete beside his head. Not random scratches—deliberate marks, carved with desperate urgency. "Mills, get me a UV light." "Quinn, I don't think—" "Just get me the bloody light." When Mills returned with the ultraviolet lamp, Quinn played it across the concrete around the body. The scratched symbols fluoresced with an eerie blue-green glow, revealing a pattern that made her stomach clench with recognition. She'd seen similar markings before, three years ago, at the scene where DS Morris had... "Christ," Mills breathed. "What is that stuff?" Quinn didn't answer immediately. She was remembering Morris, remembering the way his body had been found in an impossible position, the way the official report had glossed over details that didn't make sense. The way her questions had been deflected, her investigation quietly reassigned. She played the UV light wider, and more symbols appeared on the platform around them. Not just near the body, but everywhere—covering pillars, scratched into walls, even etched into the rusted railway tracks. The entire abandoned station was covered in a network of glowing sigils, invisible to normal light. "Mills." Her voice was steady, controlled, but she could feel her heartrate climbing. "I want you to go back up top and call for a hazmat team." "Hazmat? Quinn, what aren't you telling me?" She stood slowly, keeping the UV light trained on the symbols. In the purple glow, she could see something else—footprints leading away from the body, but not the kind made by shoes. These were bare feet, and they didn't quite look human. "Just do it, Mills. And when you call it in, I want you to specifically request Detective Inspector Sarah Chen from the Specialist Operations unit." "Never heard of her." "You wouldn't have." Quinn clicked off the UV light, plunging them back into the harsh white of the flood lamps. "She handles the cases that don't make it into the official reports." Mills hesitated, clearly wanting to ask more questions, but something in Quinn's expression warned him off. After he'd climbed back up the ladder, she found herself alone with Thomas Aldrich's corpse and the growing certainty that she was staring at something far worse than a simple murder. She checked her watch—nearly midnight. The exact time Morris had died, according to the coroner's report. The exact time when the barriers between worlds grew thin, if you believed in that sort of thing. Quinn didn't believe in much anymore. But she was starting to understand that belief wasn't always a requirement for truth. She knelt one final time beside the body, studying the victim's terrified face in the harsh light, and whispered, "What did you see down here, Thomas? What scared you to death?" In the shadows beyond the flood lamps, something seemed to shift and whisper back.