Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0HFECQP8RVKHS6RMFDS3K

The air in the abandoned Camden Tube station hung thick and cold, tasting of damp stone and something older, metallic. Detective Harlow Quinn’s boots echoed on the grimy platform tiles, her breath a faint cloud in the beam of her flashlight. The place was a tomb, sealed off from the city above, yet someone had dragged a body down here. Her partner, Sergeant Will Carter, stood by the flickering blue lights of a forensic lamp they’d run off a generator. "Quinn. Took you long enough." "Traffic's a nightmare even when you're not heading underground, Carter." She snapped on a pair of latex gloves, her movements economical, practiced. Her sharp jaw was set, her brown eyes already cataloging the scene. The body lay sprawled near the edge of the platform, a man in his late fifties, well-dressed in a cashmere coat now ruined by a dark, spreading stain on his chest. "What’ve we got?" "Marcus Holloway. Investment banker, supposedly. Wallet’s still on him. Looks like a mugging gone bad. Single stab wound to the chest. Precise." Quinn crouched, the worn leather of her watch strap pressing against her wrist. She played her light over the body. Holloway’s face was frozen in a rictus of surprise, not fear. His right hand was clenched. She used a pen from her pocket to gently pry the fingers apart. Empty. But there were faint, glittering traces of something caught under his nails. Not dirt. It looked like flecks of old, green-tinged brass. "A mugging," she said, her voice flat. "Down here. In a sealed station that requires a crowbar and a prayer to get into. His watch is a Patek Philippe. Still on his wrist. His shoes are Italian leather. They didn’t take a thing, Carter." Carter shrugged, his bulky frame blocking some of the light. "Maybe they got spooked. He fought back, they panicked, ran. Happens." "Does it?" She stood up, her light sweeping away from the body, tracing the dust on the platform. The scene was too contained. A single pool of blood, no spatter, no signs of a struggle. The killer had been close, known him, or taken him completely by surprise. Her beam caught on something a few feet away. She walked over, her bearing straight, military-precise even here in the gloom. A small object lay half-kicked under a crumbling bench. A disc of yellowed bone, about the size of a large coin, intricately carved with a symbol she didn't recognize. She bagged it without a word. "Probably just rubbish," Carter said, coming up behind her. "This place is full of junk." "Maybe." Her light continued its path, stopping at the wall behind the bench. The old tiled advertisements were peeling, but one was different. A section of wall, about the size of a doorway, wasn’t brick or tile. It was shimmering, indistinct, like heat haze off asphalt in summer. The air around it prickled against her skin. "You seeing this?" she asked. Carter squinted. "Seeing what? Dust? Damp? It's a ruin, Quinn." She ignored him, stepping closer. The compass on her wrist, the one she’d taken from a evidence locker after the Morris case—a small brass thing with a patina of verdigris and a face etched with strange symbols—suddenly grew warm against her skin. Its needle, which had been lazily swinging, snapped to attention, pointing directly at the shimmer in the wall. She looked from the compass to the wall, then back at the body. A man in a two-thousand-pound coat, killed in a place no one should know about, with flecks of peculiar metal under his nails and a bone token in his vicinity. A token that felt… specific. Like a key. "This wasn't a mugging," she said, her voice low. "Course it was." Carter’s tone was dismissive, final. "Open and shut. Weird location, but the motive’s the oldest one in the book. We find his recent contacts, see who needed cash. Probably his mistress." "He wasn't robbed," Quinn repeated, turning to face him. The forensic lights cast deep shadows under his eyes, making him look tired, impatient. "Look at the wound. Neat. Upward thrust, under the rib cage. Professional. An angry mugger stabs, slashes, over and over. This was one movement. Efficient." She held up the evidence bag with the bone token. "And he had this. What is it?" "Like I said, rubbish." Carter shifted his weight. "Some homeless person's carving. This is a waste of time. We should be upstairs, knocking on doors, not playing Scooby-Doo down in the dark." Her mind raced, pieces clicking into a pattern she alone could see. Morris had been investigating weird things before he died. Whispered reports. Objects that didn’t behave right. Places that felt wrong. He’d tried to tell her, and she’d dismissed it as stress. She wouldn't make that mistake again. "He wasn't here to catch a train, Carter." She gestured at the shimmering wall with her chin. "He was here for that." Carter stared at the wall, then back at her, a slow confusion dawning on his face. "For what? There's nothing there. It's a bloody wall." The compass needle trembled, insistent. The flecks under Holloway’s nails. Verdigris. The token. A market that moved. A compass that pointed to portals. Lore that Eva Kowalski, with her satchel full of books, had tried to explain to her over too many coffees. "He was coming from somewhere," Quinn said, the deduction solidifying into cold certainty. "Or going to. He had a token for passage. He fought with someone, not over his wallet, but over what was in his hand. They took it. Something small, made of brass. They stabbed him when they got it, and they left him here. They went back through." She nodded toward the shimmer. "Back to wherever this leads." Carter laughed, a short, harsh sound that echoed in the cavernous space. "Back through the wall? Quinn, have you lost the plot? You’ve been spending too much time with that kooky red-headed friend of yours. It's brick and mortar. It's a dead end." He took a step toward the wall, reaching out a hand as if to prove his point. His fingers passed through the shimmering air without resistance, disappearing into the wall up to his wrist. He yanked his hand back with a sharp gasp, staring at it as if it belonged to someone else. Quinn didn't smile. She just watched him, her expression grim. "It's not a dead end. It's a crime scene with two sides. And we're only standing on one of them."