Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0H210BGZEF7P5NG8YQZ56

Water dripped from the curved ceiling of the abandoned Camden tunnel, keeping time like a metronome slowing down before silence. The air down here sat heavy in the lungs, tasting of wet rust, ozone, and something copper-sharp that signaled the end of a life. Detective Harlow Quinn stepped over a rusted rail tie, her flashlight beam cutting a jagged path through the subterranean dark. Shadows stretched and recoiled against the glazed tiles of the old station walls, peeling advertisements from the 1950s looking like rotting skin. She checked the leather watch on her left wrist. 0:200 hours. Her partner, a green constable named Evans who looked ready to vomit, stayed by the rusted iron gate they’d pried open at street level. This deep down, Quinn preferred the silence. "Don't touch the circle." The voice echoed from the shadows ahead. Quinn didn't flinch. She swung the beam toward the source, illuminating a crouched figure near a pile of debris. Eva Kowalski shielded her eyes against the glare, a worn leather satchel sliding off her shoulder to hit the muddy ground with a thump. Quinn lowered the light, letting it illuminate the gruesome tableau between them rather than the redhead’s face. "This is a sealed crime scene, Kowalski. You're trespassing on police property." "It's not police property. It's not even technically London property right now." Eva stood up, brushing dirt from her knees. She tucked a frantic curl of red hair behind her left ear—a nervous tic Quinn had cataloged three meetings ago. "The ley lines are surging. If you disrupt the chalk barrier, whatever killed him might still be tethered here." Quinn ignored the warning. She stepped closer to the body. A man, mid-thirties, dressed in the sort of nondescript grey hoodie that helped people vanish in crowds. He lay on his back, eyes wide and milky, staring up at the dripping darkness. Around him, a crude circle of crushed brick and salt had been broken by the violent sprawl of his legs. "Male, caucasian, heavy lacerations to the chest," Quinn noted, voice flat. She crouched, military bearing stiff even in the cramped space. "Looks like a wild animal got him. Or a serrated blade." "It wasn't a blade." Eva adjusted her round glasses, her fingers trembling slightly. She pointed to the wall nearest the victim. "Look at the patterns in the mold. The residue. This was a Shade encounter. He didn't have a bone token." "A what?" "To enter the Market." Eva gestured vaguely down the tunnel, where the darkness seemed to thicken into a physical weight. "The Veil Market moves. It’s here tonight. He tried to get closer without paying the toll. The guardians... they don't give warnings." Quinn’s jaw tightened. She hated this. She hated the certainty in the younger woman's voice, the same delusional confidence that had gotten Morris killed three years ago. Supernatural entities didn't leave size ten boot prints in the mud. "You call that a guardian attack?" Quinn pointed a gloved finger at the victim’s right hand. Clutched in the death grip was a small brass object, green with verdigris. "He was holding this." Eva leaned in, squinting. "A Veil Compass. It points to rifts." "It's spinning." Quinn shone her light on the compass face. The needle wasn't finding North. It wasn't finding anything. It whipped around in a frenzy, scratching against the glass casing. "Because the rift is open," Eva whispered, backing away a step. "The energy down here... it's chaotic. Harlow, we need to leave. If the compass is reacting like that, the killer—the thing—is still close." Quinn stood up, joints popping. She looked from the spinning compass to the shredded chest of the victim, then to the wall Eva had pointed out. She walked to the tiled surface, boots crunching on broken glass. "You see a monster," Quinn said, running her light along the wall. "You see magic residue." "Because that's what it is. Look at the scorch marks. Cold fire." Quinn pulled a pen from her pocket and scraped the wall. A flake of black substance peeled away. She brought it to her nose. "Magnesium. And phosphorus." Eva blinked. "What?" "Flash powder. The kind cheap illusionists use." Quinn turned back to the body. "And this 'magic circle.' The break in the line is outward. He didn't fall through it; he kicked it apart as he went down. But look at the distribution of the salt." She grabbed Eva’s arm—gently but firm enough to pull her out of her occult reverie—and directed the researcher’s gaze to the floor. "If he was attacked by a shadow beast inside the circle, the disturbance should be uniform. Violent. But the salt is only disturbed at the heel. Nowhere else." Quinn walked around the body, her shadow long and distorted. "He was standing still when he died. He wasn't fighting a beast. He was surprised." "But the wounds..." Eva protested, though her voice lost some of its airy certainty. "Three parallel tears. Deep. That's a claw mark." "Or a garden rake modified with scalpel blades," Quinn countered. She knelt by the victim's shoulder. "Hold the light." She thrust the flashlight into Eva’s hands. The younger woman fumbled but steadied the beam on the victim's chest. Quinn reached out, gloved fingers pressing the edges of the jagged wound. "Clean entry," Quinn muttered. "No tearing at the top of the incision. A beast swipes. It pulls. The force creates ragged edges at the start of the wound. These incisions are surgical at the insertion point, then dragged down." She looked up, her brown eyes hard. "Someone stabbed him, then pulled down to mimic a claw. This was staged." Eva stared at the blood. "But the compass..." "Mechanical interference." Quinn stood up and walked back to the brass device still clutched in the dead man's hand. She forced the fingers open. The rigor hadn't fully set, but it was stiff. The compass fell into her palm. She turned it over. "There." Embedded in the soft brass of the casing underneath was a tiny, high-powered magnet, the size of a watch battery, glued clumsily near the center. "Someone rigged it," Quinn said, her voice dropping to a dangerous growl. "They stuck a magnet on the back to make the needle go haywire. To sell the story." Eva gasped, hand flying to her mouth. "But... why? Why fake a supernatural death here?" "Because if you find a body near the entrance to this 'Veil Market' of yours, looked over by a spooked academic like you, the police write it off as a ritual killing or a cold case. We don't look for fingerprints on a ghost." Quinn pocketed the compass. "This wasn't a guardian. This was a deal gone wrong. Probably drugs, maybe these enchanted trinkets you people love so much." She shone her own backup penlight down the tunnel, past where the darkness seemed impenetrable. "You said the Market is down there?" Eva nodded, looking at the magnet-scarred compass in Quinn's pocket with a look of betrayal. "Yes. About two hundred meters past the junction." "Then our killer didn't come from the spirit world." Quinn pivoted, tracing the mud on the ground. Among the chaotic shuffling of the victim and Eva’s own prints, there was a third set. Faint. Careful. They lead away from the body, not back toward the street, but deeper into the tunnel. Toward the market. "They went shopping." Quinn drew her service weapon. The metallic slide click sounded impossibly loud against the dripping water. "Stay here, Kowalski. Don't touch the salt. Don't touch the body." "You can't go down there alone," Eva hissed, panic returning. "Even if this man wasn't killed by a Shade, the Market is real. You don't have a token. The guards—" "I have a badge," Quinn said, stepping over the threshold of the fake circle. "And I have a murder suspect who thinks he's clever." "He might be," Eva warned, clutching her satchel to her chest, her eyes wide behind the round frames. "Or he might be baiting you into something real." Quinn paused. The darkness ahead wasn't just an absence of light; it was a physical barrier, swirling with a low, thrumming energy that made the hair on her arms stand up. She remembered Morris. She remembered the empty casket. "Let him try," Quinn said. She moved forward, the darkness swallowing her silhouette, leaving Eva alone with the dead man and the lie he’d died in.