Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT104CH43TYGSJADMG4HF2E

of cold that had been festering for decades. Rust dripped like dried blood down the tiled walls, and the air tasted of iron, mold, angular shadows, illuminating the one patch of this Marsh stood near the edge of the light, his bulk making the scene feel cramped. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Down there. On the tracks. It’s a mess.” I walked past him, my steps echoing in the cavernous space. The body lay sprawled across the rusted rails, a man in a dark over mugging gone wrong—walcleaned out of the head with something heavy and blunt. But“Who found him?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the scene. “Network Rail inspector doing a routine structural check. Nearly had a heart attack. Called it in two hours ago.” Marsh came to stand beside me, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “Looks straightforward. Wrong place, wrong time. Probably thought this old tunnel was a good shortcut or. The placement was all wrong. The impact wound was on the occipital bone, but the body was face down. If he’d been attacked from behind, the force would have sent him wound like that should have painted the wall behind him.“Not yet. Lads are still searching. Plenty of rubble down here. Could be any chunk of it.” I crouched, the worn leather of my watch strap pressing against my wrist. I ignored the pervasive smell of decay and focused on the victim. His hands. They were clean. Too clean for a man who’d supposedly been crawling through a filthy, disused tunnel. No grime under the nails, no scratches. I leaned closer. A faint, acrid smell, out of place with the surrounding rot. Ozone. Like the air after a lightning strike. “Marsh, look at his pockets.” “Already did. Empty. Like I said, cleaned out.” “Not the contents. The fabric.” I pointed with a gloved finger. The inner lining of his left coat pocket was lightly scorched, the synthetic material melted and curled inward at the edges. “That’s not from a lighter. That’s a localized, intense heat. Electrical.” Marsh frowned, his jowly face creasing with skepticism. “So he had a faulty battery pack. Happens all the time. Doesn’t change the fact that some lowlife cracked his skull for the twenty quid in his wallet.” I stood up, my knees protesting. The military precision of my bearing felt like a cage. Every instinct screamed that this was a trap, a stage set with deliberate, clumsy props. My gaze swept the area again, beyond the immediate pool of light. The darkness felt watchful. Then I saw it. A glint, half-hidden behind a fallen piece of conduit several yards down the track, away from the designated scene. I walked toward it, Marsh sighing behind me. “Quinn, forensics have already—” I held up a hand, silencing him. Nestled in the grit was a small, circular object. I crouched again. A compassigris. It was old, beautifully made, the face etched with intricate, swirling patterns that were more than just decoration. They looked like sigils. The needle wasn’t pointing north. It was spinning in a slow, lazy circle, unaffected by the movement of my body. “What’s that?” Marsh asked, peering over my shoulder. “Some tourist junk?” “Not junk,” I murmured. The patterns were familiar. I’d seen sketches of things like them before, in a file I wasn’t supposed to have, notes from a case three years ago that had been abruptly, officially, closed. Notes from my late partner, Morris. He’d been obsessed with symbols like these before he vanished. He’d called them ‘wards’ and ‘guides.’ I picked up the compass carefully. It was warm against my palm, a living warmth that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature. “Bag it,” Marsh said, his tone dismissive. “Probably just fell out of the poor sod’s pocket during the struggle.” “No.” The word was out before I could stop it. “It wasn’t on him. Look at the placement. It’s too far away, too carefully obscured. It was dropped. Or planted.” The ozone smell. The clean hands. The lack of spatter. The backwards fall. The pieces, ill-fitting and strange, began to click into a terrifying new picture. “This wasn’t a mugging.” Marsh let out a short, frustrated laugh. “Of course it was. What else could it be?” I turned the compass over in my hand. The spinning needle suddenly stuttered, then jerked to a stop, pointing firmly down the tunnel, into the absolute blackness beyond our lights. A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold traced its way down my spine. “I think he was running,” I said, my voice low. “I think he was running from something that didn’t want to steal his wallet. He was trying to get away, and he fell. That blow to the head… it’s post-mortem. Something else killed him. Something that doesn’t leave a trace your forensics team will know how to find.” I looked from the compass needle, pointing insistently into the void, back to the unnaturally clean body on the tracks. The staged scene. The wrong evidence. It was a message. A warning. And the only person who seemed to see it was the one holding a compass that pointed toward things that shouldn’t exist. Marsh was staring at me, his expression a mixture of pity and impatience. “Quinn, that’s... that’s a hell of a leap. You’re seeing ghosts.” “No,” I said, closing my fingers around the warm brass. “I’m finally starting to see what’s really here.”