Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0EAQY9VFN271G18WPSJYQ

Detective Harlow Quinn stepped into the abandoned Tube station, her boots echoing against cracked tiles. A single strip of fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting long shadows across the platform. Dampness clung to the air, the faint tang of rust and mildew pressing at her nostrils. She glanced down at her left wrist. The worn leather watch face gleamed under the flicker of the light; its strap creased from years of wear. At the far end of the platform, Eva Kowalski stood hunched over the body. Curly red hair spilled around her face. Round glasses caught the light, glinting like watchful eyes. Eva’s green gaze darted from the corpse to a battered satchel at her feet, half-open and spilling pages of handwritten notes. Every few seconds she adjusted the glasses and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Quinn walked to the edge of the platform, crouching beside the victim—a man in his late thirties, limbs splayed at an odd angle. The concrete beneath him bore splatters of dark red. She ran a fingertip along the droplet pattern. No skid marks. The blood had pooled where he collapsed, nothing smeared. No sign of a struggle. Eva leaned in. “Sigils sprayed in phosphorescent paint—common in ritual circles. Strange powder beneath his hand. Likely ground bone mixed with chalk.” Quinn frowned at the powder. Tiny white grains clung to the victim’s palm. She scraped a few into an evidence bag. “No forced entry,” she said, rising to her feet. “No mention of chanting witnesses heard. No phone calls flagging a dark ceremony.” Eva straightened, arms folded over the satchel. “The Veil Market moves locations every full moon. This was its last night aboveground. Someone might have performed a rite to open a portal.” Quinn studied the walls where pale yellow symbols glowed faintly. They curved and twisted like the limbs of some otherworldly tree. Under her flashlight, she noticed the paint’s texture—rubbery, like the residue from a children’s art kit. She knelt, pressed a fingertip into it. The smear stuck to her glove. She held it up to the light. Eva’s eyes widened. “Glow paint flakes off easily. It could be a red herring.” “That’s what I’m thinking.” Quinn turned to the pile of rubble beside a collapsed advertising hoarding. She picked up a small brass compass. Verdigris patina streaked its casing. Sigils etched around its face. The needle quivered, pointing toward the tunnel mouth. Eva reached for it. Her breath caught. “The shadow compass. I swear it just spun like that when we crossed an energy threshold.” Quinn let the needle wobble. “This one’s been altered.” She found a tiny notch cut into the brass rim. Fresh metal glinted where someone had filed a groove. “Needs a bone token to work. But the entry requirement here is simple theft. Someone wanted you to think supernatural.” Eva hesitated, then handed over a slip of paper from the satchel—a crude sketch of the same symbol sprayed on the wall. “I traced it from witness statements. Multiple witnesses said they saw figures in hooded robes.” Quinn unfolded the paper. She pressed her finger against a spiral shape. “Noisy Tube station. Echoes bounce. A single hooded figure walking past looks like many.” She rose and picked her way over broken bottles and detritus to the tunnel mouth. A pair of footprints led into the darkness: one large, booted, angular; the other small, slipping in and out of the larger tread. Eva knelt beside the prints. “A Shade’s footprint would vanish when you looked away.” Quinn shone her light along the sole pattern. “These are Nike Air soles. Not supernatural. A human in trainers. The big print overlaps the small. Two people walking in lockstep.” Eva’s freckled cheeks colored. “Two attackers. Or accomplices.” Quinn stood and dusted grit from her trousers. “They wanted to spook the Market’s regulars. That compass as a clue—crafted by a Shade artisan—would drive investigators toward rifts, shadows. They stole a genuine item to mix real and fake evidence.” She paced back to the body and crouched again. The victim’s head lay at a strange angle, a crescent-shaped abrasion across his cheek. She pressed near the wound and found fine glass shards embedded in his flesh. The glint in her beam revealed slivers of tempered glass. Another piece caught in the collar of his jacket. Quinn tugged it free with a gloved fingertip and bagged it. Eva watched. “Shattered portal barrier?” Quinn shook her head. “More like shattered watch face.” She flicked on her torch to reveal the victim’s buckled left wrist. No watch. The glass fragments matched the curvature of a watch crystal. Whoever attacked him knocked the watch loose, shattered it, grabbed the compass, and staged the scene. Eva’s lip trembled. “If it wasn’t the Market… then who?” Quinn checked her phone for the victim’s ID. Daniel Graves, age thirty-seven, freelance courier. Regularly moved parcels for under-the-table clients—artists, collectors, dealers in the supernatural. Ordered compass from Veil Market last full moon. Eva bit her lip. “So he was a buyer.” Quinn stood. She swept her light across the platform. The exit passage showed scrawlings in chalk: arrows pointing deeper into the station, circles around letters that spelled “Ripple.” She traced the chalk with her fingertip. The dust smudged into a fingerprint. Not a shard but a finger drawn through the chalk after it dried. No magical residue. Quinn pointed at the marks. “He drew these to warn Market-goers of a loose board over there.” She tapped the ground. “Board gives way into a service tunnel. He meant to slip away, perhaps escort someone to a private chamber. Someone trailed him, hit him over the head when he turned back.” Eva knelt in the chalk smear. “Do you think the killer lives down here?” Quinn crouched beside her. “No. Too close to the body. They’ll circle around. The high-level operatives don’t leave crap like this behind. This is a framing job, full of breadcrumbs.” She swept her torch beam across the tracks. No service car. No maintenance trolley. She let the light drift back to the hole under the board. A faint draft blew past her collar. She moved in and slid sideways into the tunnel. The air grew cooler. A faint hum—electrical wires overhead. She found a low-hanging cable and followed it, the tunnel curving until it opened into a small room carved from bedrock. A single bulb hung overhead, stripped bare. In the center, a table held boxes stamped with crude logos: nightshade flowers, raven silhouettes, broken masks. Quinn crouched, reading the stencil on a crate. “The Ripple Society,” she murmured. “A graffiti collective. They’ve been experimenting with glow-in-the-dark tags to spook urban explorers.” Eva slipped in beside her, clutching the compass. “They wouldn’t kill him for that.” Quinn shook her head. “Graves must’ve double-crossed them. Found out about their smuggling route. Told someone in the Market. They killed him to silence him, then staged a ritual kill to blame it on the supernatural underground.” She pointed to a crate half-open. Inside, plastic bottles of glow paint—the same rubbery batch from the symbols. A half-used tin lay on the table, spatters still fresh. She picked up the lid. The smell of artificial citrus stung her nostrils. Eva tucked her satchel under her arm. “So, no portal, no rift.” Quinn clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Not tonight.” A clatter echoed from behind the crates. The bulb flickered. Quinn drew her firearm. Her leather watch strap creaked as she flexed her wrist. Eva’s breath caught. They edged forward, light sweeping over discarded hoods and empty satchels. A soft shuffle. A muffled groan. Quinn sidestepped a crate and spotted the killer slumped against the wall, one leg curled under, the other stretched out. A digital camera lay on the floor, lens cracked. The man’s face twisted in pain, dark blood seeping through his shirt. Quinn holstered her gun and knelt. “DS Morris?” she asked, voice low. Eva touched Quinn’s shoulder. “This isn’t him. Different face.” Quinn studied the figure’s face—sharp cheekbones, stubble just crawling across his jaw. “A lookalike,” she ground out, pulling out handcuffs from her belt. “They wanted us chasing shadows.” She cuffed the killer’s wrists behind his back, careful not to compress the wound on his head. He whispered something, blood bubbling at his lips. Eva hovered. “What did you miss?” Quinn let the captive slump forward, leaned in close. “His gloves. No glass fibers. He got that shard out of the victim’s watch, not the bulletproof portal. He bought time wearing his accomplice’s hood. He held the compass to fool us.” She clicked open her radio. “Uniforms, I’ve got one suspect. ETA two minutes. And I need samples from that crate—paint, chalk, all of it.” She looked up at Eva. “Good catch on the sigils. Nobody uses bone powder anymore—too easy to trace.” She paused. “Stick around. Might be more marks to decode.” The killer coughed. Quinn lifted her flashlight and caught movement in the corner: a spool of fine glass fiber, like spider silk, coiled at the base of the crate. She picked up the spool, flicked it between finger and thumb. Then she traced the fiber back to a slit in the crate’s side—where someone had rigged a one-way mirror to spy on the tunnel entrance. She bagged the spool. Eva watched, biting her lip. Quinn zipped it closed. The bulb overhead buzzed, then died, leaving them in near darkness. Eva’s voice trembled. “Just your average thieves, then.” Quinn clicked her torch back on, sweeping the red dot across the room. “Thieves who knew how to stage a supernatural scene. Someone tried to profit off the Veil Market’s legend.” She stood and offered Eva her hand. “Let’s get him upstairs. I want to know who paid for the compass and who tipped them off.” Outside the room, the station’s hush wrapped around them again. The only sound: distant rumble of an approaching train, oblivious to the deception they’d just unraveled.