Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0PSGGH47Z61TDHB0VB54D

The abandoned Tube station reeked of copper and something else. Quinn stood in the mouth of the tunnel, her brown eyes tracking across the platform, cataloguing everything. Broken tile. Scattered debris from decades of neglect. And blood. Fresh blood that hadn't dried yet. Her worn leather watch caught the beam of her torch. 03:47. She'd been pulled from bed forty minutes ago. The body lay near the old ticket booth, twisted at an angle that suggested violence. Male, fifties, suit jacket shredded at the shoulder. But the injury pattern didn't match what the responding officer had told her. Constable Hayes stood near the platform's edge, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Multiple stab wounds," Hayes said, gesturing vaguely at the body. "Domestic dispute gone wrong, likely. The victim's ex-partner lives three blocks from here. We've got a team—" Quinn held up a hand. She approached the body without rushing, her military bearing evident in the precise placement of each step. The wounds Hayes described didn't exist. Not in the way he'd indicated. She crouched beside the corpse, careful not to disturb anything. Three lacerations across the torso. Deep. Clean. But they weren't from a blade. She ran her finger along the edge of one wound without making contact, noting the tissue separation. The flesh curled inward at precise angles. A knife would have left ragged edges where it tore through muscle and organ. These wounds had edges that looked almost cauterized. Burned. Sealed at the margins where something hot had passed through. "You're sure about the ex-partner?" Quinn stood, brushed imaginary dust from her trousers. Hayes frowned. His forehead creased in that way that suggested he'd already committed to his theory. "Pretty sure. They fought constantly. Neighbours reported it last Tuesday." Quinn walked the perimeter of the platform. The Metropolitan Police had been called at 02:15 by an anonymous tip. That detail tugged at her. Anonymous tips in abandoned Tube stations at two in the morning didn't happen for domestic disputes. People didn't stumble across those locations. Not unless they knew where to look. She found it near the far end of the platform. A bone token. Small, yellowed, carved with symbols that made her jaw clench. Three years ago, DS Morris had been investigating something in these tunnels. Beneath the city. She remembered his voice on their last call before he vanished. Static. Whispers underneath. And then nothing. "Quinn?" Hayes had followed her. "What is that?" She pulled an evidence bag from her pocket, sealed the token inside without answering. The compass in her jacket—the one she'd acquired through channels she didn't discuss—felt heavier than usual. She'd been carrying it for six months. Ever since Morris vanished, she'd started finding objects like the token. Started learning to read the ones that didn't make sense in normal cases. This wasn't a normal case. "The wound pattern," Quinn said, returning to the body. "Explain why you think a knife caused those." Hayes shifted. He pulled out his notebook, flipped through pages. "Standard penetrating injuries. The pathologist will determine exact depth and—" "The edges." Quinn knelt again, this time producing a torch from her belt. She angled it across one of the lacerations. "Look at them. Really look." Hayes bent down. His eyes narrowed. She watched the moment comprehension began and then faltered. He'd seen something wrong with his own theory but lacked the framework to understand it. "They're sealed," Hayes said slowly. "The bleeding should be worse if something that large punctured the organs." Quinn nodded. Most detectives would have missed it. Most would have accepted the obvious narrative. A man in an expensive suit found dead in an abandoned station meant crime of passion, territorial dispute, gang violence. The usual catalogue of human cruelty. But the token, the location, the wound pattern—none of it aligned with conventional violence. She stood, walked toward the tracks themselves. The third rail had no power anymore, hadn't for fifteen years. But something about the dust near it looked disturbed. As if something had moved across it recently. Deliberately. A pattern emerged in her mind. Not the pattern Hayes had constructed. A different architecture entirely. "He was brought here," Quinn said. "Not killed here." "The anonymous tip suggested—" "The anonymous tip brought us to this exact location at this exact time." Quinn turned to face Hayes. "Why? Why this station? Why now? If someone murdered their ex-partner over a domestic dispute, why arrange for the body to be discovered in the deepest part of Camden's underground?" Hayes had no answer. His silence filled the tunnel like another presence. Quinn moved toward the ticket booth. Decades of decay covered every surface. But behind the counter, beneath collapsed shelving, something caught the light. Metal. Deliberately placed. She extracted it carefully, using tweezers from her kit. A small brass compass. The casing had verdigris patina. The face bore markings that weren't cardinal directions. Protective sigils, or something approximating them. The needle didn't point north. It quivered, settling toward a direction that had no relationship to geography. "What the hell is that?" Hayes stepped closer. Quinn secured it in an evidence bag next to the bone token. Her hands remained steady. Her expression didn't shift. Eighteen years of service had taught her to absorb impossible information without flinching. "The actual crime scene," she said. "Not the body. That's secondary. Someone left us a message." Hayes opened his mouth. Closed it. Whatever he'd been taught at the academy, whatever patterns he'd learned to recognize, didn't account for what lay before them. Victims didn't arrange their own discoveries. Murderers didn't leave behind artifacts that belonged in museums or occult shops or places that officially didn't exist. Quinn's watch ticked. 04:13. The night was still young. "Get the pathologist down here," Quinn said. "And Hayes—don't mention the token or the compass to anyone else. Not yet." His hands trembled slightly as he reached for his radio. Quinn walked back to the body, studying the face of the dead man. Middle-aged. Well-maintained beard. Manicured hands. Someone with resources. Someone who'd known things. The bone token weighed against her pocket like an anchor.