AI The smell hit Harlow halfway down the ladder, sharp and sweet like burnt hair and sugar.
Her boots met the concrete with a dull slap. Lights glared along the low tunnel, too bright, bouncing off damp brick and the yellow tape that blocked the track ahead. A handful of uniforms lingered back near the ladder. The real cluster, a knot of white scene suits and one plain suit, stood thirty feet on, around something on the ballast between the rails.
Harlow straightened, rolled her shoulders once, and walked under the tape.
"Quinn, here already." The plain suit turned, face pale in the harsh light. DI Patel . His tie hung crooked, his eyes looked as if they had seen enough. "You win the prize for most enthusiastic."
"You dragged me out of bed for a trespasser on a line that never opens," she said.
"Not trespasser." He tipped his chin at the body. "Graeme Tolland. Forty-eight. Civil engineer. Contractors found his passcard on the platform above, clocked in at three this morning. No one saw him come down."
Harlow stepped closer. The air hummed. Not with the low thrum of live current, the power had gone off, but with something else, something that made the small hairs on her arms stand.
The man lay half on his back, legs twisted against the nearest rail. His clothes hung neat. Navy suit, pale shirt, silk tie, the sort of outfit that picked its own dry cleaner. His face had a strange serenity, eyes half open, mouth slack. The skin from his left palm up to his forearm blistered and blackened in a branching pattern. It crept over his chest like frost on glass.
"Electrocution," Patel said. "He comes down, trips, hits the third rail. Cooks himself. Simple."
Harlow crouched. The burnt smell thickened, undercut by copper that crawled up her nose.
"Where are his shoes?" she said.
Patel frowned.
"Under him, probably. He rolled."
"He would not roll out of his shoes," she said.
She placed two fingers against the ballast, felt grit dig under her nails. White chalk flakes, disturbed in a straight line from the far wall to where the man lay. No drag marks. No scuff where he had slipped.
A SOCO in a white hood turned, camera hanging from her neck.
"Detective Quinn, careful there."
"Relax, Briggs." Harlow rose. "You mapped footwear impressions yet."
"Prelim," Briggs said. "Plenty of boot prints from the lads who found him. Some trainer prints. Nothing you would not expect."
"Show me Tolland's," Harlow said.
Patel sighed.
"We are in a bloody tunnel, Harlow. People walk. Feet make marks. Man comes down, goes for a wander, trips into danger. It happens."
She looked at him. He looked away first.
Briggs flipped open her tablet and brought up the screen. Blue grid, ghostly white shapes overlaid. She pointed.
"These are from the engineers, steel-capped. These from Fire Brigade. These from Patel and you lot. Only one set of soles in leather, size ten, narrow. Started about four metres from the ladder."
"So he teleported," Harlow said.
Briggs hesitated.
"We cannot see his approach. There is a gap. Dust undisturbed until that point."
Harlow stepped away, walked from the ladder toward the body, slow and straight. She counted under her breath. One, two, three, four. At four metres a fan of disturbed dust began, narrow, like someone had dropped from above and steadied themselves.
She looked up.
The tunnel ceiling loomed , arching low. Conduits ran along it in rusted brackets. No hatch, no access panel, nothing.
"Quinn," Patel said, "Public Transport are already sharpening pitchforks. They want this closed as an accident before the evening rush. Do not start on teleportation."
"Do not start on stories that do not fit," she said.
She knelt by Tolland again. The burns on his arm did not form the clean oval she expected from contact with a single rail. They spread in thin filaments, like the tracery on a leaf. They converged at his palm.
"Has anyone moved his hand," she said.
"No one has touched him," Briggs said. "We waited for you, your favourite complaint."
The left hand lay slightly open. Charred skin flaked from the fingertips. Something small and round glinted black in the centre of his palm.
Harlow took a breath. Patel muttered.
"Forensics have gloves, you know."
"You called me," she said.
She pulled a fresh pair from the dispenser on the rail, snapped them on, and eased the fingers apart. The object stuck for a moment, then came free with a faint crackle.
A coin lay on her palm. Old, worn flat in places, its surface dark. Not a pound. Not anything she recognised. One side bore a face that had lost all detail except the outline of a crown. The other had been carved over with a symbol. Two intersecting circles, lines fanning out like sunrays, but crooked, as if whoever had done it knew the shape by memory, not by sight.
"Local currency?" she said.
Patel peered.
"Looks like junk. Souvenir thing. Hipster tat from Camden."
"Camden does many crimes," Harlow said. "Counterfeit Roman coins rarely top the list."
She felt weight against her wrist, the drag of her own leather watch . Three years since Morris had given it to her as a joke. Survival timer, he had called it. Eighteen years, you get a carriage clock. Until then, you get Army surplus.
She slid the coin into a paper evidence bag, sealed it, passed it to Briggs.
"Tolland carried anything else unusual?"
"We bagged his wallet, phone, passcard, keys," Briggs said. "Standard."
"No jewellery," Harlow said.
"Wedding band," Briggs said. "On his chain, under his shirt. Wife died last year, from what Patel heard."
Harlow touched the knot of Tolland's tie, tight and straight.
"He dressed careful," she said. "He would not wander into a maintenance tunnel for fun. Who logged him in."
"Security guard upstairs," Patel said. "Name of Harris. He says Tolland waved, went through the gates, like any other night shift."
"Night shift," Harlow said.
"It is his pattern," Patel said. "He likes the quiet, according to his file. Comes in, checks readings on the old lines that still feed power, updates the system. Now the old line bites back. Sad, but convenient for the tabloids."
Harlow stood. Something itched under her ribs. Not fear. Irritation. The kind she had felt the night Morris had said, Leave it, Harlow, some things do not want explaining.
She turned from the body.
"Show me where he should have gone," she said.
They moved along the tunnel. The concrete underfoot smoothed out, less ballast, more walkway. Old posters peeled from the walls, colours long bled away. A flaking sign hung crooked.
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
ELECTRICAL ACCESS
The door below the sign had three locks. Pad, deadbolt, chain. All hung loose. The padlock lay broken on the floor, guts of twisted metal exposed.
"When did this get snapped," Harlow said.
"Harris noticed at first sweep this morning," Patel said. "Doors open sometimes. Contractors take shortcuts."
She crouched by the lock. The metal had not sheared clean. It had warped, edges curled outward as if something had pushed from the inside.
"Thermal expansion," Patel said. "Heat from the rails, from the, whatever. Melted it."
"The rails are thirty feet away," she said.
He clicked his tongue.
"You know what I miss about burglary jobs, Harlow? They never argued back."
She pushed the door with two fingers. It swung inward, hinges squealing. Beyond lay a narrow corridor, darker, lined with cables that disappeared into the gloom .
Harlow stepped over the threshold. The air changed. Cooler, but thicker. A faint smell rose, under the dust and oil. Spice. Old paper. A hint of something herbal, bitter as wormwood.
Her chest tightened, as if the corridor pressed on her.
"Briggs, with me," she said. "Patel , stay with Tolland."
"Since when do you outrank me," Patel said.
"Since you volunteered me to the superintendent as 'our expert in odd things'," she said, without turning .
She heard his low swear, then the shuffle of his shoes as he went back to the body.
Briggs fell in beside her, camera raised. The corridor bent left after ten metres, then right, coiling like a question mark. On one wall, someone had painted over graffiti with thick grey, the rushed strokes still visible. The paint stopped short of the floor.
Harlow knelt. The torch beam cut a white strip along the skirting. Etched into the concrete, half-hidden by the paint run-off, the same intersecting circles as on the coin repeated at regular intervals. Small, neat, carved by a hand that cared.
"See these," she said.
"Tagger's mark," Briggs said. "They all have one. Signature."
"Taggers do not come down into disused electrical corridors," Harlow said. "They prefer trains that move."
Her gloved finger traced the groove. Her skin prickled. A faint static crackled under her nail.
She withdrew her hand.
"Take close-ups," she said.
Briggs snapped away, the flash throwing the shapes into harsh relief.
Harlow moved on.
At the end of the corridor, it opened into a small chamber. Low ceiling, bare walls, one ancient fuse cabinet with most of its guts ripped out. Empty cable trays. No tools, no chairs, nothing that spoke of regular use.
In the centre of the concrete floor, white dust marked a faint circle, almost scrubbed away. Lines radiated from it. Smudges. The footprint of some careful ritual stomped out by a clumsy shoe.
"Someone drew something here," Harlow said.
"Contractors chalk out safe zones all the time," Briggs said. "They do not want to step on live bits."
"It takes effort to wipe marks this clean," Harlow said. "Someone did not want a pattern seen."
She paced the distance from the circle to each wall. Equal. The centre of the chamber exactly.
Her gaze caught on a darker patch near the far corner. She went to it. The concrete had cracked there in a spiderweb, thin fissures around a central chip. As if a weight had dropped, hard.
"Harlow," Briggs said. "You ever get tired of staring at floors."
"They hold the story up," Harlow said.
She picture Tolland standing in the circle, coin in his hand. Something building around him, in him. Heat without flame. Light without source. The crack of that something hitting the ground and, a moment later, his body appearing four metres from the ladder with burns that grew out of his palm.
She swallowed that picture before it could settle.
"His phone," she said. "Where did you find it."
"In his inside jacket pocket," Briggs said. "Why."
"If I stand in the middle of a chalk circle and perform some idiocy, I do not keep my expensive smartphone over my heart," Harlow said. "Not unless I expect to live."
She walked back towards the corridor entrance. As she reached it, something tugged at her eye. A glint under a cable tray near the floor.
She crouched once more, breath steady, and reached under. Her fingers brushed metal, cold despite the stuffy air. She worked it free.
A small brass compass lay in her hand. No chain. Its casing wore a greenish patina, the kind that took years. The face under the cloudy glass had no numbers. Only symbols arranged around the edge, tight and intricate . The needle did not lie along any obvious north. It pointed to the wall to her right, and quivered .
"Lost property," Briggs said.
Harlow flicked open the lid, closed it again, weighing it.
"Not the sort security guards hand in," she said.
Her thumb brushed the sigils etched into the rim. Protective, some part of her whispered, from a place older than procedure and paperwork.
The needle pivoted, swung away from the right-hand wall, and locked instead on the solid slab directly opposite the corridor. It jerked, as if some invisible magnet on the other side had snapped awake.
The concrete had no door, no crack, only the faint ghost of a bricked-up arch, shape just visible under layers of grime.
"Harlow," Briggs said. "Why is that thing moving."
Harlow stepped closer to the wall. The compass strained in her hand, needle pressed so hard against the glass it shivered.
"Because this is not a wall," she said.
She lifted her left hand and placed her palm flat against the faint arch. The cold bit through glove and skin. Under her fingers, she felt the same symbol, shallow but there, carved long ago and filled in with dirt. Two circles, intersecting.
Her pulse hitched.
Something hummed. Not in her ears. In her bones.
"Step back," she said.
Briggs did not argue this time. Harlow heard her retreat, the soft scrape of paper suit against concrete.
The humming rose, teeth-on-glass, and the compass needle spun in tight frantic circles.
The carved lines under Harlow's palm warmed, then burned. Her glove smoked, the smell harsh. She snatched her hand away.
The wall breathed.
The concrete bulged inward, then outward. The outline of the arch brightened, pale light bleeding along the mortar lines of long-buried bricks. Dust sifted from the ceiling, fine, grey, coating her shoulders.
"Harlow," Briggs shouted. "The hell is that."
The centre brick crumbled without warning. It did not crack, it powdered, sucked inward into a darkness that looked too thick, too deep for the tiny room.
Cold wind punched out of that darkness, hard enough to slam Harlow two steps back and slam Briggs against the fuse cabinet. The torchlight flickered , died. For a moment, the only illumination came from behind the falling dust veil, a dull, wrong glow that painted the chamber in sour yellow.
From the widening gap, something reached. A hand, long-fingered, skin grey as wet newspaper, grasped the broken edge of the brickwork and began to pull itself through.