Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0X5RKVG9MRKXGDMGH7097

The abandoned Tube station reeked of rust and stagnant water. Detective Harlow Quinn descended the concrete stairs with methodical care, her worn leather watch catching the beam of her torch. The glow caught on something at the platform edge—a scattering of what looked like bone fragments arranged in a deliberate pattern. Not scattered. Placed. She crouched beside the remains, her sharp jaw tightening. Eighteen years on the force had taught her the difference between accident and intention. This was intention. A constable approached from the darkness of the tunnel, his footsteps echoing wrong somehow. Too many of them for one person. "Bit of a mess, Detective," he said, gesturing vaguely at the platform. "Looks like a vagrant got trapped down here. Track electrocution, maybe. Body's been taken for examination, but the scene..." He trailed off, uncertain. Quinn didn't look up from the bones. They weren't arranged randomly. They formed a shape—not quite a circle, not quite a sigil. She'd seen patterns like this before. Three years ago, before everything went wrong with Morris. "Who called it in?" she asked. "Anonymous tip. Came through about an hour before sunrise." She stood, her knees protesting, and scanned the station. The old Underground infrastructure rose around them like the ribs of some dead beast. Advertising posters from decades past still clung to the tiled walls, their colours faded to ghosts of themselves. But it was the far wall that caught her attention—marked with chalk symbols that looked deliberately applied, careful and recent. The constable was still waiting, hoping she'd accept the easy answer. Track electrocution. Vagrant. Death of the unnoticed, forgotten by everyone. "These bones," Quinn said, pointing at the arrangement without touching it, "they're not human. Mostly. See the structure? Animal bone, but worked. Carved, even. And this spacing..." She traced her finger above them without making contact. "Not where you'd expect them to scatter from an electrical incident." "Could be coincidence. Could've been here for months." Quinn's brown eyes met his. She didn't bother responding to that. A voice called from the platform's far end. "Quinn. You're going to want to see this." Eva Kowalski emerged from the shadows, her curly red hair catching what little light penetrated this deep underground. She'd been called as a consultant—technically a favour to the museum, though Quinn knew better. Eva worked in their restricted archives. When things got strange, when the evidence started pointing toward the inexplicable, they called her. She adjusted her round glasses as she approached, tucking her hair behind her left ear in that nervous habit Quinn had learned to read as genuine concern, not unease. "The symbols," Eva said, gesturing toward the chalk markings. "They're Old Welsh. Part of a binding ritual." "A binding ritual," Quinn repeated flatly. "As in magic." "As in something someone believed was magic. Believed strongly enough to spend time down here, in an abandoned station that hasn't seen foot traffic in what, decades?" Eva knelt beside the bone arrangement, her worn leather satchel dropping to the ground. She withdrew a small notebook, its pages thick with handwritten notes and sketches. "These aren't arranged for appearance. They're functional. They're supposed to do something." Quinn crouched beside her. "Do something to what?" "To something confined. Something that needed containment." Eva pointed to a series of overlapping circles drawn around the bones in what looked like chalk residue. "The body you found—where exactly was it positioned?" The constable shifted his weight. "Just... near the platform. Why?" "Inside the circles?" Eva pressed. Quinn rose, her military-precise movements taking her to where she'd first observed the scene. She examined the platform's concrete surface, running her torch beam across it. There—barely visible beneath years of dust and grime, a stain. A shape. Something had been positioned there, confined within that space, held in place by the arrangement of bone and chalk. "It wasn't a vagrant," Quinn said quietly. Eva's green eyes met hers over the top of her glasses. "No. It wasn't." "Then what was it?" "Something that needed to be kept contained. Something that kept breaking the binding." Eva stood, brushing dust from her jeans. "The body you found—it was the failed binding. The replacement. Not a victim. A purpose." Quinn felt something cold move through her chest. That feeling again. The one she'd had three years ago when they found Morris's hand in the evidence locker and no body. The one that told her the world wasn't what she'd always believed it to be. "Tell me about these symbols," she said. Eva pulled a pencil from her satchel and pointed to various markings. "This one's a containment sigil. This cluster prevents escape through non-corporeal means. And this..." She indicated the most complex marking, the one that seemed to pulse with intention even in chalk. "This is a dissolution ward. It was meant to collapse whatever was bound here, to unmake it at the moment of breaking." "And it failed," Quinn said. "Something broke the binding before the ward could trigger." Eva crouched again, examining the perimeter. "See how this section is scuffed? Something was struggling. Pushing against the boundary. And someone—our binding practitioner—had to reinforce it with a fresh containment." Quinn turned to the constable. "The body. Age, condition, anything unusual about it?" He fumbled through his notes. "Young adult, maybe twenty-five. Male. Injuries consistent with... well, they said electrical burns, but the medical examiner noted the pattern was unusual. Too precise. Too selective." "Not burns," Quinn said. "Sigil scarring. Binding marks." She looked back at Eva. "Someone bound a creature here. The binding began to fail, so they sacrificed a person to reinforce it. That person's body bore the marks because they were part of the ritual." Eva nodded slowly, moving her torch beam across the chalk symbols again. "But there's something else. These symbols—they're worn. Old. This binding's been here for years, maybe longer. The chalk's just a recent refresh." "How recent?" "Days. Maybe a week." Eva stood, slipping her notebook back into her satchel. "Someone's been maintaining it. Keeping it active. And something's been resisting." Quinn felt the weight of it settling on her shoulders—that same weight she'd carried since Morris disappeared. The weight of a world that didn't operate by the rules she'd spent eighteen years learning. "We need to find out who's been down here," Quinn said. "And we need to know what happens when this binding fails completely." The constable opened his mouth to speak, but Quinn silenced him with a glance. He was still thinking in terms of clear cases and definable evidence. He wasn't ready for this. Eva met Quinn's gaze. "There's something else. The bone used in the arrangement—it's new. Recent procurement. And it's not animal bone after all. It's human. Child-sized." Quinn's jaw tightened further. She pulled out her phone, her movements precise and controlled despite the ice in her veins. "Lock this station down," she said to the constable. "No one gets in or out without my approval. And get that body back. I want to examine the scarring personally." She turned back to Eva. "Show me everything. Every symbol, every mark. And then we're going to find out who's been working magic in my city."