Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNF83KNT22K2Z42D3M6BKDE

The air in the abandoned Camden Tube station was a thick, cold soup that tasted of wet stone, rust, and something else, something metallic and coppery that Harlow Quinn knew all too well. Her polished boots echoed with a hollow finality against the grimy tiles, the sound swallowed by the oppressive darkness of the tunnel mouth behind her. The crime scene techs had set up their halogen lamps, and the stark white light they cast felt blasphemous here, illuminating a world that was never meant to be seen so clearly. The body lay near the edge of the platform, a man in a dark overcoat, face down. The initial call had been vague, an anonymous tip about a ‘disturbance’. It hadn’t mentioned the two puncture wounds on the side of his neck, neat and precise, from which a minimal amount of blood had seeped. It hadn’t mentioned the utter lack of a struggle. Quinn crouched, her knees protesting with a familiar ache. She didn’t need to check for a pulse. The unnatural stillness of the form told her everything. She pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from her pocket, the snap of the latex loud in the hushed space. Her worn leather watch ticked steadily on her wrist, a grounding metronome against the bizarre scene. “Took you long enough, Quinn.” The voice came from the shadows near an old ticket booth, layered with a wry weariness that belonged to DS Miller. He stepped into the light, his own face looking sallow under the harsh lamps. He’d been on the scene for twenty minutes already. “Traffic above is a nightmare. Camden on a Saturday,” Quinn replied, her voice low and even. Her eyes never left the body. “What have we got?” “John Doe. No wallet, no phone. Looks like a mugging gone wrong. Throat’s a mess,” Miller said, gesturing vaguely with his chin. Quinn’s sharp jaw tightened. She leaned in closer, ignoring the stench of death that was beginning to mingle with the damp. “A mess?” she repeated, her tone flat. “These aren’t jagged. They’re surgical. And look at the placement. Jugular and carotid. This wasn’t panic. This was… efficient.” Miller sighed, the sound heavy with condescension. “Come on, Harlow. This place? It’s a dosshouse, a shooting gallery. Some junkie got lucky with a shiv, got scared, and ran. It’s not one of your conspiracy theories.” He’d been her partner for a year, a solid, by-the-book copper who thought her instincts were a relic of a traumatic past. He didn’t say Morris’s name, but he didn’t have to. His ghost was always there, a third presence at any scene that felt even slightly off. Quinn ignored him, her focus absolute. She noted the way the man’s coat was bunched slightly under one arm, as if he’d been reaching for something. His hands were clean, the nails trimmed. This wasn’t a man who lived on the streets. She shifted her weight, and her boot scuffed against something half-hidden in the grime near the body’s outstretched hand. It was a small, circular object. She picked it up, brushing off the dirt. A bone token, carved with intricate, swirling patterns. It felt unnervingly warm in her gloved palm. A ticket. An entry requirement. Her mind raced, colliding the evidence. The precise wounds. The missing valuables, staged to look like a theft. The location, an abandoned station perfect for hiding more than just homeless sleepers. “This wasn’t a mugging, Miller,” she said, her voice dropping to a near-whisper. She held up the token. “He was lured here. Or he came here to meet someone. This is a message. A professional job made to look sloppy.” Before Miller could offer another dismissive retort, a new voice, freckled complexion pale with shock, and large, round glasses that magnified her wide, green eyes. She clutched a worn leather satchel to her chest like a shield. Quinn recognized her instantly from the file she’d been compiling on the periphery of this new, strange world she was stumbling into. Eva Kowalski. Researcher. Friend to people who dabbled in things best left alone. “Miss Kowalski?” Quinn stood, her bearing straightening with military precision. “This is a crime scene. You shouldn’t be here.” “I… I know him,” Eva stammered, her gaze fixed on the body before flicking away, horrified. She tucked a strand of that vibrant red hair behind her left ear, a nervous, repeated gesture. “His name is Alistair Finch. He’s a… a collector. We were supposed to meet here tonight. To make a trade.” Miller snorted softly, but Quinn held up a hand, silencing him. She kept her eyes on Eva. “A trade. Here. What were you trading, Miss Kowalski?” Eva’s grip on her satchel tightened. She looked from Quinn’s intense, unblinking gaze to Miller’s skeptical sneer, and then down at the bone token Quinn still held. Something in her expression shifted from fear to a desperate resolve. “Knowledge,” she said, her voice gaining a sliver of strength. “He was scared. He said he’d stumbled onto something he shouldn’t have. He had something to show me, something he’d bought here last full moon. He said it was acting strangely.” Quinn’s mind, a trap primed for inconsistencies, snapped shut on a detail. “Last full moon. This market… it moves. You need one of these to get in.” She jiggled the token. Eva nodded, a quick, jerky motion. “Yes. He was paranoid. He wanted to give it back, to trade it for my research, for protection. He said it was pointing somewhere new. Somewhere wrong.” Quinn’s blood ran cold. *Pointing*. She looked from the token in her hand to the body on the ground, then back to Eva’s terrified face. The staged mugging. The professional kill. The token left behind, not taken. It wasn’t a message to the police. It was a message to *them*. To the people who knew about the market, about the things that moved in the shadows. A warning. *This is what happens to those who talk.* Miller was staring at both of them as if they’d started speaking in tongues. “A market? What are you two on about? It’s a dead junkie in a tunnel.” But Quinn was no longer listening to him. She was seeing the scene anew, through a different lens. The lack of a struggle wasn’t because the victim was surprised by a desperate addict. It was because he’d known his killer. Or because his killer was something he never had a chance to fight. The ‘shiv’ wounds were too clean, too deep, made by something far sharper and crueler than a piece of scrap metal. “What was it, Eva?” Quinn asked, her voice barely a breath. “What was he trying to give back?” Eva hugged her satchel tighter, her knuckles white. She looked like a child who had seen a monster and knew no one would believe her. “A compass,” she whispered. “A small brass compass. He said the needle didn’t point north anymore.” The pieces locked into place with an almost audible click in Quinn’s mind. Morris’s case, three years ago. Unexplained circumstances. Evidence that had been dismissed, details that hadn’t added up. A strange symbol found near his body, similar to the ones she’d seen etched on curios in evidence lockers she was never supposed to access. This wasn’t just a murder. It was a thread, pulled from the same dark tapestry that had taken her partner. And the woman standing before her, shaking in her sensible shoes, held the other end. Quinn looked down at Alistair Finch, at the two precise wounds on his neck. A professional job. A silencing. Her eyes lifted, scanning the darkness beyond the halogen lights, into the depths of the tunnel where the rules of her eighteen years on the force ceased to apply. She wasn’t just a detective at a crime scene anymore. She was an outsider stumbling into a war she hadn’t known was being fought, and the first shot had just been fired right in front of her. The evidence didn’t add up because she’d been reading it wrong. She hadn’t known the language. Now, she was starting to learn.