AI Waterdripped from the concave ceiling of the abandoned Tube station, a rhythmic , hollow plinking that echoed off the tiled walls. The air hung heavy and stagnant, smelling of damp iron, ozone, and something older, like burnt sage.
Detective Harlow Quinn stepped over a rusted rail track, her boots crunching softly on the gravel. She checked the leather watch strapped to her left wrist. 02:14 hours. The blue light from the emergency strobes of the squad cars above filtered down the emergency stairs, casting long, dancing shadows that stretched and warped across the platform.
She hated the Underground. It reminded her of being buried.
"Down here."
The voice drifted from the darkness near the old ticket barrier. Quinn moved forward, flashlight cutting a beam through the gloom . The light settled on a mess of curly red hair and a worn leather satchel sitting on the dirty ground. Eva Kowalski crouched over a body, her round glasses reflecting the harsh white beam.
Quinn approached, her spine straight, shoulders square. She took in the scene without slowing.
The victim lay supine on the dusty tiles. Male, mid-thirties, dressed in a charcoal suit that cost more than Quinn made in a month. His skin was pale, drained of colour, and his eyes stared wide at the ceiling, the pupils fixed and blown.
"He's cold," Eva said, not looking up . She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her left ear, a tremor in her fingers. "Rigor hasn't set in properly, but the temperature is wrong. He feels like he's been in a meat locker."
Quinn knelt on the opposite side of the body. She snapped on a pair of latex gloves.
"Time of death is estimated at midnight," Quinn said. "Two hours ago. It’s warm enough down here to delay cooling, but not this much."
"It's not just the temperature." Eva stood up, brushing dust from her coat. "Look at the dust on his lapels."
Quinn leaned in. A fine layer of grey silt coated the man’s suit. She touched the fabric. Dry.
"The floor is wet," Quinn noted. The condensation from the tunnels had created slick patches on the concrete, but the man’s clothes were bone dry.
"He didn't walk here," Eva said. "He was placed."
"Carried, maybe."
"Dropped."
Quinn looked at the young researcher. Eva’s green eyes were darting around the station, scanning the shadows rather than the body. She reached into her satchel and pulled out a small brass compass. The casing was covered in a green patina, the face etched with strange, sharp sigils.
"What is that?"
"A Veil Compass. It tracks rifts." Eva held it flat against her palm. The needle spun violently, twitching north, then south, then snapping back to point directly at the corpse. "It’s going haywire. The resonance here is... loud."
"We deal in facts, Kowalski. Fingerprints, DNA, ballistics. Not resonance ."
"Facts?" Eva gestured at the dead man. "What’s the cause of death? No wounds. No bruising. No ligature marks on the neck. He just stopped."
Quinn examined the neck. Smooth skin. The pulse points were unblemished . She checked the wrists. Same. She ran her hands along the torso, feeling for breaks or concealed stab wounds. Nothing. The suit was unbuttoned at the top, the tie loose, but there was no sign of a struggle. The clothes were pristine , aside from the dust.
"Massive coronary?" Quinn suggested. "Aneurysm?"
"At his age? Maybe. But look at his expression." Eva shone her light on the victim's face. "That isn't the look of a heart attack. That's terror."
The man’s mouth was open in a silent scream, the muscles of the neck frozen in extension. Quinn had seen heart attacks. They usually looked like surprise, or pain, or peace . This looked like he had seen the devil coming for him.
"Overdose," Quinn said, standing up. "Tox screen will tell us. PCP can induce this kind of panic and catatonia."
"There's no kit," Eva pointed out. "No needle, no packet, no wrapper. Junkies don't leave their gear behind. And they don't dress in Savile Row to shoot up in a ghost station."
Quinn walked a tight circle around the body. She swept the flashlight over the surrounding debris. Discarded coffee cups, old newspapers, a rats' nest in the corner. Nothing that looked like drug paraphernalia .
She stopped near the victim’s right hand. The fingers were curled into a tight fist. Quinn reached down and gently pried the thumb open. It was stiff, resisting her effort. She applied pressure, forcing the hand to unclench.
Something small and white fell onto the tiles.
Eva gasped. "Is that...?"
Quinn picked it up with tweezers. A bone. Small, carved into the shape of a hexagon. A hole had been drilled through the centre.
"A token," Eva said, her voice dropping to a whisper . "For the Market. Entry fee."
"The Veil Market?" Quinn frowned, turning the bone over in the light. "The rumour mill downstairs? I thought that was a fairy tale for grifters."
"It's real. It moves. Every full moon. It’s here tonight. Or it was."
"So he was a customer." Quinn held the bone up. "If this is a membership card, maybe he was robbed. Someone knocked him out, took the goods, left the body."
"Then why leave the token? That’s the most valuable thing he had on him if he wanted to get back in."
Quinn pocketed the token in an evidence bag. She shone her light on the walls of the station. The old advertising posters were peeling , revealing layers of history underneath. Victorian brickwork, then 1920s paint, then graffiti.
She paused. Near the ceiling, roughly six feet up, the brickwork looked dark. A soot stain, shaped like a starburst.
"Kowalski, hand me that compass."
Eva hesitated, then passed the brass device over.
Quinn held it up. The needle stopped spinning and pointed directly at the scorch mark on the wall.
"He wasn't killed here," Quinn said.
"We established that."
"No. I mean, he wasn't killed on the ground." Quinn angled the beam of her flashlight to match the trajectory from the mark on the wall to where the body lay. "He fell from there."
"There's no ledge," Eva said.
"He was projected. Thrown." Quinn walked to the wall. She reached up, touching the soot. It came away on her glove, oily and slick. "There’s residue here. Not combustion. Something chemical. Alchemical?"
Eva stepped closer, peering at the mark. "Brimstone. Cold iron. Maybe a containment rupture?"
"Energy discharge," Quinn corrected. "Enough force to throw a grown man ten feet. But he doesn't have a scratch on him. No blunt force trauma to the head where he hit the tiles."
"He hit the floor... gently ," Eva murmured. "Like a feather. That explains the dry clothes and the lack of impact injuries. The force threw him, but the magic caught him."
Quinn turned back to the body. She looked at the man’s chest again. She pressed her hand flat against the shirt fabric.
"His heart isn't beating, obviously. But there's a vibration."
"What?"
"Put your hand here."
Eva tentatively placed her hand over the victim's sternum. She pulled back instantly. "It’s humming. Like a live wire."
"He wasn't murdered," Quinn said, her mind racing , piecing the impossible physics into a report she could barely comprehend. "He was a battery."
The compass in Quinn’s hand began to heat up. The needle rotated faster, vibrating against the glass.
"Whatever killed him took the energy," Eva said, her eyes wide . "A life drain. But it wasn't clean. The feedback loop burnt the wall."
"Leaving the husk behind." Quinn looked at the bone token in the evidence bag. "And the key."
"Maybe the key was the trigger," Eva suggested.
Quinn scanned the darkness of the tunnel mouth. The blackness felt thicker now, oppressive . The Veil Compass was jumping in her palm, ticking like a Geiger counter near a meltdown.
"This wasn't a robbery," Quinn said, staring into the dark. "And it wasn't an overdose. Someone—or something—opened a door, and this man was the payment."
She clicked off her flashlight, plunging them into relative darkness, save for the dim blue glow from the stairs.
"We need to clear the station. Now."
"We can't just leave him," Eva protested.
"We aren't leaving him. We are retreating to a secure perimeter." Quinn pulled her service weapon, checking the load. "Because the entity that took his payment might be coming back for change."
Eva grabbed her satchel, clutching it tight to her chest. "The compass. It's pointing at the tunnel. The rift is still open."
"Can you close it?"
"Not with this. I need supplies. From the archives."
Quinn holstered the weapon but kept her hand resting on the grip. She looked down at the dead man, the grey dust settling on his still-open eyes.
"Then we move. Fast."
She turned on her heel, her bearing rigid and sharp, heading back toward the emergency stairs. Eva scrambled to follow, the compass needle spinning wildly, pointing the way into the black.