Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0NCDWNNPQSV4H8GV1SJ8C

The abandoned Tube station reeked of rust and stagnant water. Detective Harlow Quinn descended the corroded metal stairs, her worn leather watch catching the beam from her torch. The Metropolitan Police had cordoned off the entrance with tape that snapped in the draft pushing up from below, but they hadn't ventured far into the tunnels themselves. "Watch the third step from the bottom," DS Patel called from somewhere in the darkness. "Rusted clean through." Quinn skipped it, landing on the platform with a hollow thud that echoed down the disused tunnel. Her torch swept across Victorian-era tiles, most cracked or missing entirely, revealing the brick beneath. Someone had spray-painted graffiti over the old "Camden Town" signage, though the paint looked decades old itself. Patel stood near a service alcove, photographing something on the ground. The flash illuminated his face in stark white bursts. "Victim's male, mid-thirties," he said without looking up. "Wallet says Thomas Kirkland. IT consultant from Islington. No signs of forced entry to the station, no defensive wounds, no apparent cause of death. Coroner's going to love this one." Quinn crouched beside the body. Thomas Kirkland wore an expensive suit, now rumpled and dirt-stained. His eyes stared at nothing, pupils blown wide. She checked his pockets systematically—phone, keys, the wallet Patel had mentioned. Everything a man should have on him. "Found him an hour ago," Patel continued, checking his notes. "Anonymous tip called it in. Untraceable mobile, naturally." "Naturally." Quinn stood, playing her torch across the alcove walls. The beam caught something that made her pause. Scratches in the brick, dozens of them, clustered around head height. Fresh scratches, judging by the exposed red beneath the soot. Patel followed her gaze. "Could be from rats. Place is crawling with them." "Rats don't scratch in straight lines." She traced one mark with her gloved finger. The groove ran horizontal for perhaps six inches before stopping abruptly. Another ran parallel, then another. "These are deliberate. Organized." "Organized scratching. Right." Patel's voice carried that careful neutrality he used when he thought she was reaching. "Look, maybe he got disoriented down here, panicked, tried to claw his way out before his heart gave out. Cocaine use would explain the pupils, the erratic behaviour—" "There's no blood under his fingernails." Quinn moved to Kirkland's hands, examining them under her torch. "Not a mark on him. Whatever made these scratches, it wasn't our victim." The platform stretched away into darkness on both sides. Quinn walked along it, sweeping her light methodically across the ground. Her boots crunched on debris—broken glass, shattered tiles, the detritus of decades of neglect. But near the alcove, she found something else. Footprints in the dust, lots of them, overlapping and confused. Too many for one person stumbling through the dark. "He met someone here," she said. "Multiple someones." Patel joined her, his own torch adding to the illumination. "Could be old prints. This station's been closed since the sixties, but urban explorers break in sometimes. Probably unrelated." Quinn knelt, studying the pattern. Three distinct sets of prints, all recent based on how the dust had settled. One matched Kirkland's expensive brogues. The other two were harder to identify—one looked like boots, heavy-soled, the kind that left deep impressions. The other was smaller, more delicate. "These prints converge at the alcove," she said. "Then diverge. Two sets going deeper into the tunnel, Kirkland's staying put." "You're saying they left him here." "I'm saying they walked away and he didn't." She straightened, following the prints with her torch. They led toward the mouth of the tunnel, where the platform ended and the tracks began. "What's down there?" "More tunnel. Eventually connects to the Northern Line proper, but there's blockages, cave-ins. It's a dead end." "Then why meet here?" Quinn descended from the platform onto the tracks, testing each step before committing her weight. The rails were caked with rust, the sleepers rotting. "Why bring someone to an abandoned station with no easy exit unless you need privacy?" "Drug deal gone wrong?" "No drugs on the body. No money exchanged." She'd reached the tunnel entrance now. Her torch revealed another twenty feet before the passage curved, but something glinted on the ground just before the curve. She moved toward it, heard Patel scrambling to follow behind. The object was small, brass, roughly circular. She picked it up with gloved hands, turning it over. A compass, though unlike any she'd seen. The face was etched with symbols that hurt to look at directly, geometric patterns that seemed to shift when she wasn't focusing on them. The needle spun wildly, refusing to settle on any direction. "Evidence bag," she said, holding it up. Patel fumbled one from his kit, and she dropped the compass inside. Through the plastic, she could still see the needle spinning. "Probably broken," Patel offered. "Magnetic interference from the rails." Quinn didn't answer. She'd seen the scratches on the walls, the way they clustered around the alcove like tally marks. Like something counting. And now this compass with its impossible symbols, found exactly where the footprints led before disappearing entirely. She returned to the platform, to Kirkland's body. His face held an expression she recognized from three years ago, from the last time she'd seen her partner Morris before he'd vanished during that warehouse investigation. Not fear exactly. Something closer to understanding. The look of someone who'd finally grasped something fundamental and terrible about the world. "The anonymous tip," Quinn said. "What exactly did they say?" Patel consulted his phone. "Just that there was a body in the old Camden station. Gave precise coordinates for this platform." "Coordinates. Not directions, coordinates." "Yeah, latitude and longitude. Bit odd, but—" "Someone wanted us to find him." Quinn photographed the scratches, the footprints, the entire scene from multiple angles. "Not just find him. Find him here, in this specific location. Why?" Patel shifted uncomfortably. "You're reading a lot into an anonymous tip." "Look around, Patel." She gestured at the alcove. "Kirkland came here willingly, met with at least two people, and died without a mark on him. No drugs, no violence, no apparent cause. Just a broken compass and scratches on the wall like someone keeping score." "So what's your theory?" Quinn stared at the compass through the evidence bag, watched the needle spin. Three years ago, Morris had mentioned a black market operating somewhere in the old Tube tunnels. Supernatural nonsense, she'd called it. Occult conspiracy theories that went nowhere. And then Morris had gone into that warehouse and never come out, and the only evidence they'd found were scratches on the walls. Hundreds of them. Just like these. "I don't have one yet," she lied. "But I want every camera within three blocks of this entrance checked. Someone knew Kirkland would be here. Someone wanted us to know about it afterward." "That's a lot of footage to review." "Then we'd better start." She took one last look at the scene, at the scratches counting something she couldn't quantify, at the prints leading nowhere. "And Patel? This stays between us for now. Not a word to the superintendent about the compass or the scratches. Just a sudden death in an abandoned station, pending toxicology." He frowned but nodded. Quinn climbed the stairs back to street level, where dawn was beginning to grey the sky. The evidence bag weighed heavy in her pocket, and she couldn't shake the feeling that finding Kirkland was only the beginning of understanding what he'd stumbled into. Or what had been waiting for him in the dark.