Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNFKV94C4903QAQF7MG5PGF

The lift hadn't worked in forty years, so Harlow Quinn took the stairs—eighteen flights down to a station that shouldn't exist on any Tube map. Her footsteps echoed off tiled walls slick with moisture, the sound stretching strange and thin in the darkness. The Met's forensic team had rigged temporary lighting, but the bulbs cast more shadow than illumination, pooling black in the corners of the abandoned platform. She'd been a detective for eighteen years. She'd seen bodies in alleyways, in canal water, in the sterile antiseptic of hospital morgues. But this—whatever this was—sat wrong in her chest like a bone splinter working its way toward her heart. The body lay near what had once been a ticket barrier, now corroded into rust and memory. A man, mid-thirties, dressed in clothes that didn't belong to any decade she recognized—a charcoal coat with unusual buckles, boots polished to a military shine. His face was frozen in an expression she could only describe as reverence, eyes open and fixed on something above. No visible wounds. No blood. The forensic team had already processed the scene and come up empty-handed. "Natural causes," said DS Chandra Kapoor, appearing at her elbow with a notebook. He'd been with her for two years now—eager, methodical, and utterly incapable of seeing anything that didn't fit into neat categories. "Tox screen came back clean. No signs of struggle. We're waiting on the coroner, but—" "But there's no reason for a natural death in an abandoned Tube station." Quinn crouched, studying the victim's hands. Fingers curled loosely around nothing. "What's in his pocket?" Chandra flipped through his notes. "Personal effects. Wallet—genuine leather, good quality, contains two hundred pounds in cash and identification for one Daniel Ashworth, residential address in Islington. No phone. No keys. No anything else." Quinn stood, brushing dust from her knees. The platform stretched in both directions into darkness, the tracks long since removed, leaving only gulleys of rust and debris. At the far end, something glinted—metal, maybe, catching the weak light. "Someone came down here to die," she said. "Or someone brought them." "With respect, ma'am, there's no evidence of foul play. Could be a hermit. Some of these urban explorers take it too far." "He died of what, exactly? Fear?" She gestured at the face, the upturned eyes. "He wasn't running from anything. He was waiting for something." Chandra frowned but said nothing. Quinn moved toward the glinting object, her footsteps muffled now by accumulated debris—rotted newspapers, scattered detritus, the occasional skeleton of a rat. The object resolved itself as she approached: a compass, small enough to fit in a palm, its brass casing mottled with green verdigris. She didn't touch it, crouching instead to examine it where it lay on the filthy ground. The face was etched with symbols she didn't recognize—lines and curves that seemed to shift in the dim light, though she knew that was a trick of exhaustion. The needle pointed firmly toward the far wall of the platform, toward a darkness that seemed somehow deeper than the rest. "Chandra. Come look at this." He joined her, squinting. "A compass? What was he, a collector?" "These markings." She pointed. "Have you seen anything like them before?" He shook his head. "Could be ornamental. Some people collect—" "The needle's pointing at the wall." "So?" Quinn stood, walking to where the compass indicated. The wall was brick, old London clay, slick with moisture and decades of grime. She ran her hand across the surface, feeling for anything unusual—loose mortar, a draft, anything. Nothing. But as she stood there, she felt it—a vibration so faint it might have been her imagination. A hum, low and subsonic, felt more than heard. Like standing near a massive electrical transformer. Like the air before a storm. "Ma'am?" Chandra had stayed by the compass. "There's someone here. Says she's from the British Museum. Authentication or something—she's got credentials." Quinn turned. A woman stood at the top of the stairs, backlit by the weak emergency lighting. Curly red hair, round glasses catching the light, a worn leather satchel slung across her body. She looked entirely out of place—a professor dragged into a nightmare. "This is a crime scene," Quinn called out. "How did you even get down here?" The woman descended the stairs slowly, carefully, as if navigating a church. When she reached the platform, Quinn could see her more clearly: green eyes, freckled complexion, a nervous habit of tucking her hair behind her left ear. She carried herself like someone used to libraries and quiet_archive rooms, not crime scenes and death. "Detective Quinn?" The woman's voice was steadier than her posture suggested. "My name is Eva Kowalski. I work in the restricted archives at the British Museum. I was contacted by a colleague who saw the coroner's preliminary report." She paused. "May I see the body?" "You don't look like a coroner's consultant." "I'm not. But I've seen deaths like this before." Eva's eyes moved to the far wall, the one the compass had pointed to. Her face went pale. "Oh no." "What do you know?" Quinn caught the woman's arm, perhaps harder than necessary. "You know something about this." "The compass." Eva's voice had dropped to a whisper. "Where is it?" "By the body. What does it mean?" Eva pulled free gently, moving toward the compass with the reverence of someone approaching an altar. She crouched but didn't touch it. "A Veil Compass. I've only seen them in texts." She looked up at Quinn. "This wasn't a natural death, Detective. This was a doorway." "A doorway to what?" Eva stood slowly, turning to face the far wall. "In certain places, the barrier between our world and others grows thin. People have always found these places—sacred groves, stone circles, places where the walls are thin enough to..." She trailed off, pressing her palm against the brick. The hum grew louder. Quinn felt it in her teeth now, in the bones of her skull. "There's a market," Eva said quietly. "Underground. It moves—every full moon, they move to a new location. Camden, tonight. This station." She turned back to Quinn. "Someone summoned him here. Or promised him something. The Veil Compass points to rifts—to doorways between worlds. He was trying to step through." "You're telling me this man died trying to—what? Walk into another dimension?" "He died stepping through." Eva's eyes were sad, ancient. "But the door closed. They're not supposed to close once you've committed. Something went wrong. Or someone." She glanced at the body. "He was betrayed. Someone gave him a false compass, or told him the wrong words. He walked into a wall and the... the other side rejected him." Quinn's mind raced. Eighteen years of service. Eighteen years of evidence and procedure and logic. But three years ago, her partner Morris had died on a case that made no sense—bodies found in sealed rooms, witnesses who remembered nothing, a darkness that the surviving officers couldn't describe. She'd buried that. Told herself it was trauma, exhaustion, the mind playing tricks. But the patterns were the same. They were always the same. "Chandra." Her voice came out hoarse. "Bag the compass. Full forensic. And call the coroner back—tell them to look for cellular degradation inconsistent with standard post-mortem intervals. Tissue damage at the molecular level." "Ma'am?" "Do it." Chandra hesitated, then moved toward the body, shooting her a confused look. Eva watched this, then turned back to the wall. "The market is still here. Tonight. The sellers, the buyers—they'll have answers. Someone knew he was coming. Someone wanted him to fail." Quinn stepped closer, feeling that hum in her blood now, in the scar tissue where Morris's death had left her incomplete. "How do we find them?" Eva reached into her satchel and withdrew a bone token, small and white and carved with symbols that matched the compass. "You need one of these to enter." She pressed it into Quinn's palm. The bone was warm, almost alive. "But Detective—once you go through, you can't unsee it. Everything you've built your career on, every rational explanation—it all falls apart. Are you ready for that?" Quinn looked at the token. Then at the wall. Then at the body of a man who had died reaching for something impossible. Morris had been reaching for something too. She was sure of it now. "Show me," she said. The wall shimmered, and the hum became a song, and Detective Harlow Quinn stepped forward into the space between worlds.