AI The scraped metal gates of the abandoned Tube station at Camden hung crooked on their hinges, the faded "No Entry" sign flapping with a plastic stiffness beneath the jaundiced lamplight. Detective Harlow Quinn ducked beneath the yellow tape and strode forward, boots echoing sharp and authoritative in the hollow darkness. Her hand brushed a flaking pillar, scanning grime and graffiti, and she found herself mouthing the old Tube line name as if it might reveal what lay ahead. Train schedules—those stuck-down posters—remained pasted to the wet-stained tiles, a last, stubborn record of the world above.
She counted four SOCO technicians milling about near the stairwell, their headlamps throwing unsteady halos around a patch of tiled floor. DaCosta, a jowly PC with dirt under his nails, waited beside a battered thermos, nose wrinkled.
"Scene's clear, Detective. Bit of a madhouse, this. Not like any sight I’ve caught on the job." He jiggled the lid of his flask. "You’ll want to see this before the brass shows up."
Quinn dipped her head, offering little beyond a grunt, and took slow inventory of the shadows—places she might hide if she were someone else. Her foot caught on broken glass, a century-old bottle, and then the smell hit: sulphur and old pipe smoke mingling with coppery iron.
She bent, knees grinding quietly, as she moved towards the taped-out circle on the floor. Shards of something lay scattered across it, glittering oddly in the artificial blue-white torch beams. Most glass she’d seen in scenes like this never shimmered lilac or hummed so faintly. She narrowed her eyes. Two paces to the left, a length of scorched wire curled into a figure-eight, singed around the edges, blackened. No heat came from the wire now, but Quinn caught the burnt tang.
DaCosta called after her, mouth set. "SOCO's already bagged what they can, but one tech says half of this stuff belongs nowhere in our forensic manuals."
Quinn’s nostrils flared as she straightened, standing back to take in a wider view. Water pooled in the shallowest dip, sending odd, flickering reflections across the ceiling—a stalactite of mineral stain catching each quiver from the torch beams. No blood, but plenty of smudged boot prints, too heavy for a single person.
Harlow fished a notebook from her jacket, pencil balanced in her left hand—a soldier’s well-trained precision in the gesture. "Body?"
"Victim’s gone, Detective," came Faye Lin, her partner on duty tonight. Faye wiped her nose on a sleeve, nerves making her jaw tic. "Scene looks like a mugging at first but—well, you'd better look for yourself."
Quinn scanned the chalk outline, marked with tape—no actual chalk used in years, but the phrase stuck. The outline was oddly shaped. Not the usual human sprawl—something longer, arms outstretched in ways bodies didn’t bend unless they’d been... encouraged. No sign of weapon or purse, nothing but the glass, the scorched wire, and a neat pile of powder near the boundary.
"And no witnesses?" Her voice clipped out, echo sharp.
Faye hunched beside the mess, held up a bag. "This was wedged between the tiles, by the stairs. Could be rubbish, could be something else." A brass compass, face etched with crabbed, looping symbols, twitched on its string.
Quinn's breath caught—faint recognition. She allowed her curiosity to flicker , just for a moment, then gestured for gloves. "Show me."
Faye passed it over with a shrug. "Usual junk at first glance, but the needle keeps spinning. Not magnetic , if that's what you’re thinking."
The compass's casing felt damp, a trace of old sweat or rain, and the sigils caught the torchlight best. Verdigris stained the edges green. The needle kept twitching, not with the lazy surety of a well-built instrument, but a panic —always pointing to the far, shadowed corner where a rusted service door hung ajar.
"That door wasn’t broken when the first officers arrived," DaCosta added, crossing his arms, "but Smith swears he heard something moving inside when he checked it—nobody there. No forced entry, either. D'you reckon some kid’s playing ghost?"
Harlow rolled the compass between her fingers. "You hear of a market running this far underground, DaCosta?"
He grunted. "Rumours, sir. Traders, maybe. Plenty of rats and squatters, not much else. If someone’s selling out of here, they’ll move on tonight, after this."
"Market folks clean their mess better than this," Faye cut in, pointing with her torch. "I reckon squatters, maybe a deal gone bad. What about the scorch marks?"
Quinn crouched. Her gaze traced the pattern around the wire, then to the purple shards. She peeled off a glove to touch the powder, bringing it close to her nose. No familiar note of drugs from the street—something mustier, like mould and bonfire.
"Burnt residue here, but the edges are too perfect . Whoever staged this, they knew what they wanted—" She stopped. The compass began to settle, needle straining at a new angle, away from the door this time, towards the tiling behind the defunct ticket booth.
Harlow palmed the casing and stood, her sharp jaw working. "Bag the wire, glass, residue. I want the lab on every inch—metals, isotope, you name it. No rough guesses. Faye, run prints on every stair, both sides."
Faye squinted up, a curl of red hair escaping from behind her ear as she moved. "None of this fits a normal set-up. If it’s a ritual, I’ve never seen one this... messy."
DaCosta gave an incredulous bark of a laugh. "Ritual, now? Since when did we turn witch-hunter?"
Quinn ignored him, tilting the compass again, watching the needle jerk and settle, always tugging toward another dark corner.
"The victim. Anything odd before?" She fixed Faye with a steady stare, those brown eyes nearly black in this light.
Faye shook her head. "No missing persons matches yet, so far as they told me on comms. Only odd thing—witness outside thought she saw someone in a 'cloak.' Spooked, wouldn’t stay for a statement. Said the air felt wrong."
DaCosta rolled his eyes. "People see ghosts whenever we get called down here. Old city nerves. Next you’ll tell me the tiles hum when you listen close."
Quinn returned the compass. "Why’d the witness mention the air?"
Faye shrugged. "She said it tasted like battery acid. I'll chase the CCTV—if I can even get anything down here—"
Quinn’s gaze drifted to the tiled wall behind the ticket booth. Cracks radiated from an improbable spot, almost oval, edges blackened.
"You force the ticket booth door, DaCosta?"
He shook his head. "No. Why?"
She motioned them both back, then pressed her weight into the false panel, fingers running across the brittle tiles. Something gave.
Air—colder than the rest of the station—spilled out, bearing another waft of burnt wire and cardamom. Harlow ducked inside. The passage beyond was barely wide enough for her height, the walls warped, the floor at a shallow tilt. Drag marks scored the dust; at least two sets of prints moving in, only one coming out.
"Fresh," she murmured, as Faye moved in behind, breath quickening.
"That track leads deeper, Detective. Could be squatters, but no standard break pattern—too straight."
Quinn nodded. Her mind gambolled between anomaly and intent, every thread of training pricked and alert. She ran her fingers along the shallow groove. "Whoever left did so with purpose. Nobody stumbles or drags their feet like that unless they're being marched, or following something else."
The path dog-legged sharply left, swallowing up more darkness, and Quinn paused to listen. The silence behind the old tiles clung in her lungs.
Faye coughed, voice thinner now. "If the Market set up here, we won't get a second chance if they catch us poking."
Quinn flexed her hand, watch strap tight around her wrist. "Market wouldn’t risk leaving trace like this. Too reckless, too obvious. No. This—" she kicked a bit of powder, watched it splay in unnatural shapes, "—this is either staged for us, or for someone who understood what was happening."
A dull, metallic thump sounded somewhere deeper in, a warning or a beckoning. Harlow adjusted her jacket, brow furrowed , eyes alive.
"Get everyone topside except SOCO. I want silence . Whoever moved through here might still be on our side of the tunnel." She knelt by the gouged floor, notebook ready. "Let’s see what secrets the Market left behind."
Her jaw set, detective's mind working at every tick of her worn leather watch , back arched as if marching on parade, she pressed forward, senses tuned for every whisper that sought to slip past her guard .