Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNFNBV59JRC8SHQMH86PJE1

The air in the abandoned Tube station was a physical weight, cold and thick with the ghosts of damp concrete and rust. The single forensic lamp, powered by a humming generator, threw stark, dancing shadows up the curved tile walls, glinting off the faded mosaics of a forgotten line. The beam of Detective Harlow Quinn’s own flashlight cut a cleaner path, a blade of white slicing through the murk. Her boot heels echoed with military precision, a sound that felt out of place in this swallowed, silent space. The body was sprawled at the edge of the platform, where the tunnel’s mouth yawned into perfect blackness. A man, mid-forties, dressed in what looked like the robes of a minor academic or a particularly earnest renfaire attendee. Quinn circled him, her face a mask of sharp, unreadable angles in the shifting light. Her left wrist, where the worn leather strap of her watch sat snugly, gave a phantom ache, a familiar herald of trouble. “Cause of death is preliminary asphyxiation, strangulation, ligature marks on the neck,” said the Medical Examiner, a young man whose voice was muffled by his mask. “But the contusions are… odd. Uniform depth, no sign of struggle on his hands. No defensive wounds.” Quinn didn’t answer. She was looking at the dead man’s right hand. It was curled into a loose fist, but between his thumb and forefinger, she could see the corner of something metallic, greenish. She knelt, the concrete cold through the knees of her trousers. With gloved fingers, she gently pried the hand open. A small brass compass lay in his palm. The casing was old, worn to a patina of verdigris, the glass face scratched but the etchings beneath still visible—odd, angular sigils that made her eyes want to slide away. The needle was not pointing north. It was quivering, pointing directly into the dark throat of the tunnel. “Bag this,” she said, her voice flat. “Full trace. I want to know every fingerprint, every fleck of dirt, going back to the smelter.” “Detective Quinn?” The voice came from the archway that led to the old ticket hall. Eva Kowalski stood there, clutching a worn leather satchel to her chest like a shield. Her round glasses reflected the forensic lamp, hiding her green eyes. Her freckled complexion looked pale in the artificial light, a stark contrast to her riot of curly red hair, which she immediately began tucking behind her left ear. “Miss Kowalski,” Quinn said, rising to her feet. “Research assistant from the British Museum. They said you’d be liaising. You know this place?” “Theoretically,” Eva said, stepping closer, her gaze flitting from the body to the compass being bagged, then to the strange, sigil-marked tiles that lined the walls. “It’s mentioned in certain… non-standard texts. A transit point. A crossroads.” “A crime scene,” Quinn corrected, her tone leaving no room for mythology. “Who was he?” “His name is Alistair Finch. He was a freelance procurer. Not of standard antiquities.” Eva took a deep breath, as if steeling herself. “He dealt in things that shouldn’t exist. He had a stall here, I’m told.” “Here?” Quinn swept her flashlight beam around the empty, derelict platform. “There’s nothing here.” “Not now,” Eva said softly. “But last night was the full moon.” The statement hung in the cold air. Quinn’s jaw tightened. DS Morris had been obsessed with lunar cycles toward the end, scribbling dates on his bedroom wall in the hospital. She pushed the memory down, a stone into deep water. “A market. An underground market. You’re saying this ‘Veil Market’ sets up in abandoned stations?” “It moves. Every full moon. You need a token to find the current location. A bone token.” Eva’s eyes drifted back to the compass evidence bag. “That… that’s a Veil Compass. Shade-made. It doesn’t point to magnetic north. It points to weak spots. Rifts.” “Rifts.” “In the fabric of things. Places where the… rules are thinner.” Eva hugged her satchel tighter. “They’re tools for navigation. For those who travel in such places.” Quinn walked over to the edge of the platform, shining her light into the tunnel. The beam was swallowed after twenty feet. The compass needle, now sealed in plastic, had been pointing this way. “So, our victim dealt in black-market supernatural curios. He was killed here, after hours, after his market packed up. Robbery?” “Nothing obvious on him was taken,” called the ME. “Wallet’s in his inner pocket, cash still there. A ring on his finger. Not a standard mugging.” Quinn turned back to the body, her mind working. No defensive wounds. Uniform ligature marks. He was strangled from behind, quickly, efficiently, by someone strong enough to overpower him without a fight. Someone he might not have seen as a threat until it was too late. Or someone he knew. “Maybe it wasn’t about taking something,” Eva offered, her voice tentative. “Maybe it was about stopping him from finding something. Or going somewhere.” Quinn’s brown eyes fixed on her. “That compass. If it points to these ‘rifts,’ and it was pointing into that tunnel…” “Then there might be one down there,” Eva finished, a mix of dread and scholarly fascination in her tone. The detective’s gaze swept the scene again, slower this time. The lack of struggle. The specific, odd item in his hand. The location, known only to a specific, secretive clientele on a specific night. The evidence was arranging itself in her mind, but the picture it formed refused to resolve into anything that belonged in a Metropolitan Police case file. “He was meeting someone,” Quinn said, thinking aloud. “After the market closed. Someone who also knew how to get in here. They came up behind him. Professional kill. But they left the compass. They left his money. They weren’t here for goods or cash.” “Information?” Eva suggested. “Or the compass itself,” Quinn countered. “But they didn’t take it. They left it in his hand.” She walked back to the body, crouching again. She looked at his face, the peaceful expression, the lack of terror. “He wasn’t afraid when he died. Or he was too surprised to be. He knew his killer. Trusted them enough to turn his back.” She stood, her movements crisp. “The killer took the token. The bone token. That’s the only thing missing that makes sense. Without it, you can’t find the next market. You can’t ask questions there. The killer isn’t just covering their tracks; they’re cutting off the avenue of inquiry at the source.” She looked at Eva. “Who else knew about this place? Specifically this location, last night?” Eva’s fingers went to her hair again. “Other vendors. Buyers with tokens. The… organizers. It’s a closed system, Detective. The kind of system that polices itself.” “And how did *you* know?” Quinn asked, her voice dropping, becoming dangerously quiet. Eva met her gaze then, and behind the glasses, Quinn saw not guilt, but a deep, weary knowledge. “Because Alistair Finch was my informant. I’ve been researching the movement of certain enchanted artifacts for the Museum’s restricted archive. He was helping me trace a provenance. I was supposed to meet him here tonight. He sent me a message yesterday. It just said, ‘The compass is singing. I’ve found the leak.’” “The leak?” “He didn’t explain. But in his world, a ‘leak’ usually means a rift that’s… growing. Becoming unstable. Or known to the wrong people.” Eva looked at the dark tunnel. “He must have come to investigate. And someone followed him. Or was already here.” Quinn stared into the blackness. The humming of the generator was the only sound. The compass needle had pointed, insistently, into that nothingness. A tool for finding what was lost, or what was hidden. Her own instincts, honed over eighteen years, were a different kind of compass, and they were spinning wildly. This wasn’t a gangland hit or a domestic murder dressed up weird. This was something else. Something that smelled like the unexplainable silence after the gunshot that killed Morris, the empty alley where the evidence should have been. “We’re going down there,” Quinn said, not as a question. “Detective, my briefing was to consult on historical context, not to—” the ME began. “Stay here, secure the scene,” Quinn interrupted. She looked at Eva. “You have a light?” Eva nodded, pulling a heavy-duty flashlight from her satchel. “Then you’re with me. You read the maps. I’ll watch the shadows.” Quinn’s tone brooked no argument. She took one last look at Alistair Finch, a man killed for knowledge in a place that didn’t exist, holding a compass that didn’t point north. The evidence didn’t add up to a clean arrest. It added up to a door, cracked open into a darker, stranger city that lived beneath the one she’d sworn to protect. And Harlow Quinn, her watch ticking softly against her wrist, had never been able to leave a door unopened.