Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTX1T9TKK2XASTN031KFCA3

The cordon tape stretched across the mouth of the abandoned Tube station like a grin, yellow and obscene against the pre-dawn grey. Harlow ducked beneath it, her worn leather watch reading four-seventeen as she descended into Camden's forgotten infrastructure. The Metropolitan Police's temporary halogen lamps threw harsh shadows across the tiled walls, turning decades of water damage into something resembling dried blood. DS Patterson met her at the platform level, his notebook already out, pen clicking in that nervous pattern that signalled a complicated scene. "Victim is male, mid-thirties, wallet identifies him as Marcus Trent." Patterson gestured toward the body sprawled near the far wall, where the old advertising boards had long since rotted away. "Coroner estimates time of death around midnight. No obvious signs of trauma, but—" "But?" Harlow moved closer, her military-trained gaze sweeping the platform in systematic quadrants. "His eyes. Look at his eyes." She crouched beside the corpse. Marcus Trent stared upward with pupils blown so wide the iris had nearly vanished, twin pools of black that reflected the halogen glare. The expression frozen on his face wasn't pain or fear. Recognition, perhaps. Or wonder. "Toxicology will take weeks," Patterson continued, scribbling. "My money's on a bad batch of something. The location fits—dealers use these abandoned stations for drops all the time." Harlow's jaw tightened. She'd heard that explanation before, three years ago, when DS Morris had been found in a similarly derelict location with that same expression of terrible understanding carved into his features. The official report had listed cardiac arrest brought on by drug interaction. She'd never believed it. Morris hadn't touched drugs in fifteen years of sobriety. "What was he doing down here?" She stood, boots scraping against the gritty platform surface. "That's the strange bit. Security camera on the street level caught him entering at eleven forty-three, alone. No one else on the feed for the entire night." "Someone could've come from the tunnels." "Could've." Patterson's pen clicked faster. "But there's no secondary footprints. Just his. And these." He pointed his torch beam at the ground near the body. Harlow followed the light and felt something cold settle in her chest. Symbols had been drawn in what looked like chalk dust, forming an incomplete circle around the corpse. Not occult imagery from films or television—these were precise, geometric, almost architectural in their complexity. One section remained unfinished, as though the drawer had been interrupted. "Kids playing around," Patterson offered. "Urban explorers love this rubbish. Probably been here for weeks." "These are fresh." Harlow touched the edge of one symbol with her pen. The dust smudged, still powdery rather than set. "And look at the victim's hands." Marcus Trent's right palm bore traces of the same white powder, concentrated at the fingertips. But his left hand was empty, fingers curled as though he'd been holding something. "He drew these himself?" Patterson's clicking stopped. "Right before he died?" "After he died, if the timeline's accurate. The symbols overlay the blood pooling pattern." Harlow stood, studying the incomplete circle from above. "He comes down here at eleven forty-three with something in his left hand. Sometime around midnight, his heart stops. Then someone—or something—arranges him like this and starts drawing these symbols but doesn't finish." "That's impossible. There's no one else on the security footage." "Then we're missing something." The symbols tugged at memory, their angular precision familiar in a way that made her skull ache. She'd seen similar markings once before, photographed at the Morris scene but dismissed in the official report as graffiti. She'd kept copies of everything from that investigation in a locked drawer at her flat, unable to let it rest. Footsteps echoed from the tunnel entrance. A woman appeared, small and freckled, with curly red hair escaping from under a knit cap. She carried a worn leather satchel and wore round glasses that caught the halogen light as she stopped short at the cordon tape. "Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't realize—" The woman's gaze fell on the body and she went very still. "Shit." "Police investigation. You need to leave." Patterson moved to intercept her, but Harlow raised a hand. "How did you get past the cordon upstairs?" "I came from the tunnels." The woman touched her left ear, tucking a strand of hair behind it. "There's access from the Regent's Canal if you know where to look. I'm researching the old station architecture for the British Museum and I thought—" Her green eyes fixed on the symbols surrounding the body. "Those are containment sigils." Harlow's spine straightened. "Containment for what?" "I don't—I mean, theoretically, if someone believed in that sort of thing—" The woman stopped, seeming to recalibrate. "I'm Eva Kowalski. I work in the restricted archives. These symbols appear in several medieval texts related to... look, this is going to sound completely mad." "Try me." Harlow's voice came out harder than intended. Eva pushed her glasses up. "They're meant to trap entities that exist partially outside normal space. The circle has to be completed and then sealed with a physical anchor—usually an object of personal significance to the entity." She pointed at the gap in the symbols. "Whoever was doing this didn't finish. Which means if they were successful in summoning something—" "Stop." Patterson laughed, sharp and nervous. "We're investigating a probable overdose, not playing Dungeons and Dragons." But Harlow was staring at Marcus Trent's empty left hand. An object of personal significance. Something he'd been carrying when he entered. Something that was no longer here. "What kind of object?" Eva met her eyes, and Harlow saw recognition there—the look of someone who'd seen past the comfortable explanations into something darker underneath. "Anything connected to the entity's nature. A tool they'd used. Something they'd created." Eva's voice dropped. "If we're talking about a Shade, it would be something they'd crafted. They're artisans by nature." Harlow pulled out her phone and brought up the crime scene photos from Morris's death. She'd taken her own pictures before the official photographers sanitized everything. She showed Eva the image of similar incomplete symbols. "Three years ago. Different location. Same patterns." Eva's face went pale. "How many others?" "Just these two. That I know of." Harlow's watch ticked in the silence. "What would someone want with a Shade?" "The same thing people want from any creature caught between worlds. Information. Access." Eva's hand went to her satchel. "There's a black market—calls itself the Veil Market. It moves around, operates in places like this. If Marcus Trent had something a Shade had made, he might've been trying to use it as payment." Patterson made a disgusted sound. "This is absurd. Detective Quinn, you can't seriously—" "I need everything from the victim's flat. Especially any unusual objects. Brass, copper, things with markings." Harlow kept her gaze on Eva. "And I need to know where this market operates next." Eva tucked her hair behind her ear again. "It moves with the full moon. The next one is in three days." "Can you get me in?" "You need a bone token for entry. I have one, but—" Eva glanced at the body, at the incomplete containment circle. "Detective, if a Shade got loose in London three years ago and someone's been hunting it ever since, we have much bigger problems than a black market." The halogen lamps flickered. Just for a second, barely noticeable, but Harlow's hand went instinctively to her service weapon. In that moment of dimness, the symbols around Marcus Trent's body seemed to glow with their own cold luminescence. Patterson saw it too. His pen had stopped clicking entirely. "What happens if a containment circle fails?" Harlow asked. Eva's voice was barely a whisper. "Whatever was meant to be trapped inside is free. And whatever was meant to be protected outside becomes prey."