Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0G38ZZPMFXFBGCFYNR5BW

The abandoned Tube station smelt of wet concrete and something else—something copper-sweet that Harlow Quinn had learned to associate with the worst kind of discovery. She ducked beneath the yellow police tape, her worn leather watch catching on the edge as she straightened. The timepiece left a brief impression on her wrist, a familiar weight from fifteen years of scenes like this. "Down the platform, Detective. Fair warning—it's a strange one." DC Marcus Webb. Young, eager, and still operating under the delusion that every case could be solved with sufficient enthusiasm and proper paperwork. He held a torch at an awkward angle, its beam cutting through the underground gloom. "Strange how?" Webb's mouth worked around words he seemed reluctant to commit to. "Just... you'll see." The platform stretched before them, cracked tiles bearing advertisements for products and companies long since dissolved into bankruptcy and memory. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness beyond the torchlight, a metronomic pulse that had probably echoed through these tunnels for decades. Quinn counted her footsteps out of habit. Thirty-seven from the entrance to where the forensics team had gathered. The body lay between the tracks, positioned with deliberate care. Male, mid-thirties by the look of him, dressed in a suit that cost more than Quinn's monthly salary. No obvious wounds. No blood pooling beneath him, despite that copper-sweet smell that had greeted her at the entrance. His hands were folded across his chest, fingers laced together in a parody of repose. "What do we know?" Webb consulted his notebook, the pages already damp from the underground air. "Victim's name is Sebastian Cross. Thirty-four years old. Investment banker, according to the ID. Found two hours ago by a group of urban explorers who called it in from above ground—they didn't want to come back down here." "Time of death?" "That's where it gets complicated." Webb lowered his voice, though the forensics technicians were too far away to overhear. "Dr. Chen estimates he's been dead at least twelve hours. Rigor mortis has come and gone. But his body temperature is normal. Still warm. Like he died minutes ago." Quinn crouched beside the body, studying the face without touching it. Sebastian Cross had died with his eyes open, staring at the curved ceiling of the tunnel as if expecting something to descend from the darkness. His expression held confusion. "Were the urban explorers interviewed?" "Uniforms took statements. They swore they hadn't touched anything. Said they found him exactly like this." She moved around the body, her eyes tracing the perimeter. The concrete between the tracks showed no disturbance, no signs of struggle. No drag marks. Either Cross had walked to this spot and lay down voluntarily, or someone had carried him here with impossible care. "What's your read on this, Webb? Drug overdose? Some kind of occult nonsense?" The question made Webb shift his weight. " overdose would explain the lack of external trauma. But the body temperature doesn't fit. And the positioning—it looks staged. Ritualistic, maybe. I've seen something similar in a case file from a few years back. Satanic panic stuff, turned out to be teenagers with too much imagination." Quinn's jaw tightened. She had seen that file too. Had been the one to close it, against her own instincts. "What did the scene look like in that case?" "Similar positioning. Hands folded, body placed between parallel lines. But that victim had been drugged. Toxicology came back with a cocktail of sedatives." "And you think this is the same?" Webb shrugged. "I'm just exploring possibilities. We won't know anything until the post-mortem." Quinn leaned closer to the body, her attention caught by something on the victim's left wrist. A mark, partially hidden by his shirt cuff. She retrieved a pen from her jacket and used it to lift the fabric, revealing an impression pressed into the skin—a circular shape with what appeared to be symbols around its edge. "Did anyone photograph this?" "Photograph what?" She pointed with the pen. Webb leaned in, his torch illuminating the mark. His breath caught. "I didn't see that before. Must have been hidden by the cuff." "It wasn't hidden, Detective. You didn't look." Quinn straightened, her mind already working through possibilities. "The mark is fresh. See how the skin is still raised? Whatever made this impression was removed recently. Within hours of death, possibly after death." "What kind of object leaves a mark like that?" Quinn had seen something similar before. Three years ago, in a file that had been sealed and buried deep in the Metropolitan Police's archives. A file that contained photographs of DS Morris's body, discovered in circumstances that had never been adequately explained. The memory surfaced with familiar precision, sharpening her focus. "Something brass, by the colour of the residue. Circular. Etched with symbols." She looked around the platform, her gaze sweeping across the cracked tiles and discarded debris. "The killer took it with them. Which means it was important enough to risk returning to the scene after death." "Returning?" "This body was moved, Webb. Look at the dust patterns on his shoes. He walked here, but those are city streets on his soles, not underground grime. Someone brought him down here after he was already dead, placed him in this exact position, and removed whatever made that mark on his wrist." Webb's frown deepened. "But Dr. Chen said he's been dead at least twelve hours. And the body temperature—" "Is wrong. I know." Quinn walked the perimeter of the scene, her sharp eyes cataloguing details. "What else did the urban explorers say? Did they mention anything unusual about the area? Other people? Sounds?" Webb flipped through his notes. "They said they heard dripping. Water, they assumed. And something about the air feeling strange. Heavy, one of them said. Like before a storm." "The air pressure." "Excuse me?" Quinn stopped at the edge of the platform, looking down at the tracks that stretched into darkness. "Before a storm, the air pressure drops. Some people can feel it in their joints, their sinuses. It's the same sensation reported in locations with significant electromagnetic activity." "You think there's a scientific explanation for this?" "I think there's an explanation we haven't found yet." She turned back to face him. "Cross was involved in something. His suit, his shoes, his watch—they all speak to wealth and status. But his hands tell a different story." Webb looked confused. "His hands?" "Look at his fingertips. The calluses. The slight discolouration beneath the nails." Quinn returned to the body, gesturing to the victim's hands. "Those aren't the hands of a man who sits behind a desk moving money around. Those are working hands. Someone taught him to use them, recently enough that the calluses haven't fully formed." "That could be a hobby. Rock climbing, maybe. Or guitar." "On an investment banker working seventy-hour weeks?" Quinn shook her head. "He was learning something. Something that required manual precision and left residue under his fingernails. Something that might explain why someone wanted him dead and arranged." She pulled a pair of gloves from her pocket and knelt beside the body, carefully examining the victim's pockets. Empty. No wallet, no phone, no keys. The ID Webb had mentioned must have come from elsewhere. "Where was his identification found?" "One of the urban explorers had it. Said it was lying on the platform near the entrance." "Convenient." "You think they planted it?" Quinn considered the question. "I think someone wanted us to know who he was. But they didn't want us to find whatever else he was carrying." She stood and stripped off the gloves. "Cross the urban explorers off your list of suspects. They stumbled into something, but they didn't do this." "How can you be sure?" "Because whoever did this knew what they were doing. The staging, the timing, the removal of evidence—this wasn't opportunistic. It was calculated." Quinn looked toward the darkness of the tunnel, where the tracks curved and disappeared from view. "Where does that lead?" "Nowhere, officially. This station's been closed since the fifties. The tunnels were sealed." "Unofficially?" Webb hesitated. "There are stories. Homeless people use some of the abandoned stations. Kids dare each other to explore. But the structural surveys say it's unsafe past the next junction. Partial collapse about twenty years ago." Quinn was already moving toward the tunnel entrance. "Get forensics to photograph everything. Then I want them to process the platform for footprints—not just the immediate area around the body. I want to know if anyone else has been down here recently." "Detective Quinn, where are you going?" She paused at the threshold of darkness, her hand instinctively touching the watch on her wrist. The copper-sweet smell was stronger here, mingling with something else—something that made the fine hairs on her arms stand at attention. "To see what the killer didn't want us to find."