Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNFYX9YJYM6DY02HDJZMNDG

The stairs down to the platform had been flooded with rainwater for years—or so the reports said. Detective Harlow Quinn descended anyway, her boots splashing through three inches of stagnant water that smelled of rust and something older, something that reminded her uncomfortably of the Thames at low tide. Her torch cut through the darkness, illuminating tiles that had once been white and were now grey with decades of neglect. Uniformed officers had cordoned off the entrance to the old Camden Town station platform with tape that seemed absurdly bright under her flashlight's beam. She ducked under the tape and made her way toward the cluster of SOCO technicians working beneath the glare of portable floodlights. "Detective Quinn." A constable she didn't recognize hurried over, his face pale beneath the artificial light. "We weren't expecting you. This is—is Middlewich's jurisdiction." "Middlewich called me." She didn't elaborate. The detective in charge of the neighboring borough had been unusually forthcoming when she'd called him about the body they'd found, almost eager to hand the case off. That alone told her something was wrong. "Walk me through it." The constable swallowed. "Male, late thirties. Found at approximately 6:47 AM by a maintenance worker who shouldn't have been down here. Multiple stab wounds to the chest. No identification, no wallet. And—" He hesitated. "And?" "The blood. It's—" He shook his head, gesturing for her to follow. "You should see for yourself." Quinn descended the final steps to the platform and stopped. The body lay near the edge of where the tracks would have been, now a trench of darkness where her flashlight couldn't find the bottom. The man lay face down, arms splayed, his dark coat pooled around him like a shadow. The blood was indeed wrong. It spread from beneath him in patterns that didn't match any stabbing she'd ever seen—spirals and arcs, as if he had spun while bleeding out, leaving a trail that curved and branched in ways that made her stomach tighten. "Single wound to the back," the constable said quietly. "Entry between the fourth and fifth ribs. No defensive marks on the hands." She crouched, ignoring the protest from her knees, and studied the wound. He was right. No defensive wounds. No struggle. Either he hadn't seen his attacker, or he hadn't fought back. Or he'd been unable to. "What do we know about him?" " Nothing. No prints in the system. His clothes are high-end but unlabelled—no brand tags, no laundry marks. His watch is custom, Swiss movement, probably worth more than my salary." The constable paused. "There's one more thing. His pocket." Quinn reached into the dead man's coat—her gloves catching on the fabric, which was smoother than it should have been—and withdrew a small brass object. A compass. The face was etched with symbols she didn't recognize, tiny and precise, and the needle pointed firmly toward the far wall of the platform, directly at the darkness beyond the track bed. "A compass?" She turned it over. The casing was green with age, corroded in a way that reminded her of church bells. "It was in his coat pocket. Open, like he'd been checking it." She looked at the needle, still pointing with impossible certainty toward the far wall. "That wall is solid brick." "Yes, ma'am." Quinn stood, her knees popping, and walked toward the wall. The blood trails led here too, she realized. Not just spirals but a path, a deliberate pattern that ended at the base of the wall and then—nothing. Just brick and damp and the distant sound of water dripping somewhere in the dark. "Has anyone examined the wall?" "The wall?" The constable sounded confused. "It's a wall, ma'am. Brick and mortar, probably original to the station. There's nothing behind it but earth." She shone her flashlight along the surface, looking for anything—door, seam, anything. The bricks were old, soot-stained, crumbling in places. But there, near the base, almost hidden beneath years of grime: a symbol. Carved into the brick. Three interlocking circles with a line through them, like an eye crossed out. "Get me a forensic analyst down here," she said. "I want that symbol lifted and compared to any known organizations." "Ma'am, this is an abandoned Tube station. There's no connection to any—" "Tell me about the maintenance worker." The constable blinked at the change of subject. "He's waiting upstairs. Old man, been doing night checks for the council for fifteen years. Says he never comes down here but heard something last night. Shouting, he said. And—" Another hesitation. "Lights." "Lights?" "He says he saw lights. Down here. Flickering, like candles, but brighter. He thought kids were sneaking in to party, so he came down to chase them off. Found the body." Quinn looked back at the compass in her gloved hand. The needle still pointed to the wall. Still pointed to that symbol carved into the brick. "Who reported this to Middlewich?" "The constable on scene. Why?" "Who found the body first?" "The maintenance worker. He called it in. Uniform responded, found the—" The constable stopped. Frowned. "Wait. The maintenance worker called it in at 6:47. But the coroner says death was sometime between 10 PM and midnight. That's almost seven hours. Where was the body in those seven hours?" Quinn looked at the blood patterns again. The spirals. The path leading to the wall. "It wasn't here," she said slowly. "The body wasn't here when the lights were seen. It was placed here afterward." "But that's—there's no sign of disturbance. No drag marks. The blood—" "Is because he was killed somewhere else. Then moved." She walked back to the body, crouching again. The blood had dried to a dark brown, almost black, but she could see now what she'd missed before: the edges were too clean. The blood had pooled and dried in place, then been disturbed, picked up, carried here. "He was killed in a building. A room. Then brought here and arranged." "Arranged how? And why?" She didn't answer. She was studying the compass again, the way the needle trembled slightly but never wavered from its target. The symbol on the wall. The lights the maintenance worker had seen. The impossible precision of the blood patterns. "There was a market here," she said. "Years ago. Before it was closed." The constable shook his head. "I don't know anything about that, ma'am." But Quinn did. She'd read the file three years ago, the one that had made her partner, Morris, so obsessed. The Veil Market. A rumor of a black market that moved, that sold things that shouldn't exist. Morris had been convinced it was real. He'd gone looking for it, followed leads into the wrong parts of the city, and ended up dead in an alley with no witnesses and no evidence and a coroner's report that couldn't explain the burns on his hands. She'd buried the file. Told herself it was grief. Told herself Morris had been chasing shadows. The compass needle pointed at the wall. "Get me the historical records for this station," she said. "Everything. Original plans, modifications, anything that was built here or beneath it." "Ma'am—" "Now, constable." He hurried off, and Quinn stood alone on the platform, her flashlight beam the only movement in the dark. The symbol on the wall stared back at her. Three circles. An eye crossed out. She didn't know what it meant, but she knew Morris had seen it before he died. She knew because he'd drawn it on the back of a receipt in his desk, the last thing she'd found when she'd cleared out his office. The compass was still pointing. Something was behind that wall. Something that had been here when the lights flickered, when the shouting had echoed through the dark. Something that had pulled a man across the city, across the city and down into this forgotten place, and left him with a wound in his back and a compass in his pocket. Quinn tucked the compass into her coat and turned to look at the body again. The man's face was turned to the side now, the light catching his features, and she felt her breath catch. She knew him. Not personally. But she'd seen his picture in a file, in Morris's files, the ones she'd tried so hard to forget. A name connected to the Veil Market. A buyer. A seller. A man who'd been looking for something that couldn't be found in any ordinary place. Morris had been looking for him too. The constable returned, breathless. "The records—they're being sent over. But, ma'am, there's something else. The coroner found something in the wound. Something that doesn't—" "What?" "Metal. A fragment. They're running it now, but it doesn't match any known alloy. It's not steel, not iron, not anything in their database." Quinn looked at the wall. At the symbol. At the compass needle, still pointing, always pointing. "Tell the coroner to keep testing," she said. "And tell Middlewich this case is now mine. Full transfer." "But, ma'am, the jurisdiction—" "There is no jurisdiction." She pulled out her phone and photographed the symbol on the wall, the way the light caught the carved lines. "Not for this. Not anymore." She'd spent three years trying to bury what Morris had known. Trying to convince herself that the supernatural was just a word, just a story people told to explain the inexplicable. But the compass in her pocket was pointing at a wall that shouldn't have anything behind it, and the man on the ground had been dead for hours before anyone found him, and the blood patterns spiraled toward something that wanted to be found. Quinn had one question left: who had put the compass in the dead man's pocket? Someone who wanted the body to be found? Or someone who wanted her to find what it was pointing to? She looked at the wall again, at the symbol, at the darkness that pressed against the edges of the floodlights. Morris had died chasing shadows. Maybe it was time she caught one.