Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0H0DEEMRVD05EW7KGANCH

Water dripped from the rusted concave roof of the abandoned Tube station, a rhythmic *plink, plink, plink* that echoed against the tiled walls. The air down here tasted of ozone, wet copper, and the stale sweetness of rotting fruit. Detective Harlow Quinn stepped over a discarded crate filled with what looked like dried newts, her boots crunching on the grit of the platform. She checked her wristwatch, the worn leather strap digging into her skin. She was late. Not that time mattered much in a place where the shadows seemed to stretch longer than physics allowed. She flashed her badge at the uniformed officer standing guard by the emergency exit. The young man looked green, his eyes darting around the flickering stalls of the Veil Market as if expecting the gargoyles carved into the brickwork to come alive and eat him. "They're through there, Detective. The... ah, fortune tellers." Harlow ignored the tremor in his voice and walked past. The market was in full swing despite the corpse, traders in heavy cloaks hawking vials of glowing liquid and serrated knives made of bone. She kept her gaze forward, jaw set, shoulders squared. Military precision. She wouldn't let them see her sweat. She found the crime scene cordoned off near the old ticket booth, a faded barrier of police tape that looked embarrassingly mundane against the backdrop of enchanted stalls. Eva Kowalski crouched by the body, her round glasses slipping down her nose. She wore a oversized knit cardigan and her wild red curls were held back by a pencil. Harlow’s oldest friend didn’t look up, too busy examining the dead man's fingernails with a penlight. "Evening, Harlow. You missed the interesting part. The wards stopped screaming about five minutes ago." Harloq ducked under the tape. "I didn't know you consulted on homicides now, Evie." "I don't. But the Met calls the British Museum when they find a dead man with a patina of verdigris on his skin. They called the restricted archives. I happened to pick up the phone." Eva finally stood, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear in a nervous tic. She gestured to the corpse. The victim lay sprawled on his back, arms thrown wide as if embracing the grimy ceiling. His skin, where it wasn't covered in a fine, green dust, was pale as milk. He wore a velvet waistcoat and a silk shirt that had been torn open at the chest. "Who is he?" "Julian Vane. High-end fence. Specialized in inter-dimensional contraband. Nasty piece of work, usually." Harloq knelt. She ignored the smell of sulfur and focused on the mechanics of death. "Cause of death looks obvious. Heart attack. The shock of a robbery, maybe." "Robbery?" Eva scoffed, shifting her weight. Her satchel, heavy with books, thumped against her hip. "Nothing is stolen. Look at his pockets. They’re bulging. And look at the Veil Compass." Harloq followed Eva’s finger. Clutched in the dead man’s right hand was a small brass instrument. The casing was etched with protective sigils, the needle inside spinning lazily, refusing to settle. "A compass. So he was lost." "It’s attuned to rift energy, Harlow. It points to magic. Right now, it’s pointing at him." Eva adjusted her glasses. "It makes sense. Vane tried to smuggle something volatile through a rift without paying the tariff. The backlash cooked him. Spontaneous combustion of the soul. Classic clumsy novice error." Harloq leaned closer. The blood vessels in Vane’s eyes had burst, flooding the whites with red. But there was something else. A small, almost imperceptible mark on his neck. Two puncture wounds, neat and precise, lacking the swelling or bruising of a bite. "You say it was a magical backlash?" "That's the standard pattern. Overloading the nervous system with raw ether. The green dust is the residue." "Then explain the bruising on his knuckles." Harloq pointed. Vane’s right hand, the one holding the compass, was scraped raw. The skin was abraded, dirt ground deep into the tissue. "Fell over?" Eva suggested, though her voice lacked conviction. "He fell backwards. See the scuff marks on the heel of his loafers? They’re pushed forward, towards the toes. He slid back. If he fell from a standing position, the impact would be different." Harloq gestured to the pristine velvet of his waistcoat. "And look at his shirt. It’s torn open, but the fabric isn't burnt. No scorch marks. If the energy cooked him from the inside out, why is the silk intact?" Eva frowned, tucking her hair again. "Maybe the energy dissipated internally?" "Possibly. But magic or no magic, physics still applies. I don't see a weapon, but I see a struggle." Harloq stood up and walked a slow circle around the body. "You said he was a fence. Someone who deals in dangerous goods. A man like that doesn't make 'novice errors'. He’d have protections." "He clearly didn't have enough." "Or someone bypassed them." Harloq stopped at the victim's feet. She looked at the floor around the body. The dust of the station was undisturbed for a three-foot radius, a perfect circle of emptiness around Vane. "Look at the ground, Eva." Eva crouched again, squinting. "It's clean. Someone swept up?" "No. The dust is pushed away. Radially. As if a shockwave expanded from right here." Harloq pointed to the center of Vane’s chest. "But you said it was internal. If the shockwave came from him, why isn't he at the epicenter of the debris pattern? He’s slightly off-center." Eva bit her lip, her eyes darting from the floor to the compass. "The readings are erratic. The Veil Compass is reacting to the residual energy. It’s confusing the scene." "The compass isn't confused. It's a tool. It reads the environment." Harloq pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and snapped them on. She reached down and gently pried the brass compass from Vane’s stiff grip. The needle spun violently, then jerked to a halt. It wasn't pointing at the body. It was pointing at a stack of wooden crates five yards away. "It's not pointing at him, Evie. It's pointing at *that*." Harloq walked over to the crates. They were stacked haphazardly, covered in a tarp. She lifted the corner of the heavy canvas. Underneath sat a cage. The bars were made of iron, cold to the touch. Inside, a small, lizard-like creature with scales of obsidian watched her with unblinking yellow eyes. It was chewing on something. "What is it?" Eva asked, coming up behind her. "Bait." Harloq shone her torch into the cage. The lizard hissed, scrambling back. In the corner of the cage lay a half-eaten rat. But more importantly, etched into the floor of the cage was a symbol. A binding rune. "Vane wasn't transporting the lizard," Harloq said, her mind racing, piecing together the fractured narrative. "He was feeding it." "Chameleons eat bugs, Harlow. Not rats." "That’s not a chameleon." Harloq turned back to the body. "The marks on his neck. Those weren't bites. They were injections. Vane was drugged." "With what?" "Something to paralyze him but keep him conscious. Something to stop his heart from exploding from fear." Harloq gestured to the clean circle around the body. "The shockwave wasn't the cause of death. It was the method of extraction." "Extraction?" "Vane had something inside him. Information. A location. A memory." Harloq walked back to Eva, lowering her voice. "The killer paralyzed him, set up the cage to channel the energy, and then used Vane as a conduit to crack the wards on this cage. The 'backlash' you saw? That was Vane’s life force being siphoned off to open the lock." Eva stared at the compass in Harloq’s hand, the needle now trembling towards the lizard. "But... the cage is locked. It’s still shut." "Because Vane died too soon." Harloq looked down at the man's peaceful, frozen face. "The killer botched it. They took too much, too fast. The heart gave out before the cage opened. The shockwave happened when the connection snapped." Eva paled, the freckles on her nose standing out against her skin. "That’s necromancy. High-tier blood magic. That’s way above Vane’s pay grade. He was a fence, not a battery." "He was a loose end." Harloq dropped the compass into an evidence bag. "And the killer is still in the market." "How do you know?" "Because the cage is still shut." Harloq scanned the faces of the traders watching them from the shadows of the stalls. "And that lizard looks hungry." She stepped back over the tape, her eyes locking onto a figure in a dark cloak standing near the exit, the hem of their garment stained with a distinctive green dust. They weren't watching the body. They were watching the cage. "Eva, stay with the body." "Harlow, wait—" Harloq was already moving, cutting through the crowd, her hand drifting to the holster at her hip. The figure turned, slipping into the tunnel leading to the deeper Underground. Harloq broke into a run, the sound of her boots swallowed by the dark.