Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTX1T9TRNMH8WFY9YHZ925E

The abandoned Tube station reeked of rust and something else Quinn couldn't place. Copper, maybe. Or the metallic tang of blood left too long in stagnant air. Her leather shoes crunched over debris scattered across the platform—shattered tiles, old newspapers yellowed to the color of diseased teeth, a child's doll missing one arm. She descended the final steps and checked her watch. 11:47 PM. Forty minutes since the call came through. Constable Reeves stood near the platform's edge, his torch beam cutting through darkness that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Young. Probably his first real scene. Quinn watched him shift his weight, watched him avoid looking directly at the body. "Got a name yet?" Quinn asked. "Marcus Webb. Twenty-three. Lived two streets over in Camden." Reeves didn't turn around. "Uniforms found him when they responded to a noise complaint from the shopkeeper above. Said it sounded like something heavy fell through the floor boards." Quinn crouched beside the corpse. Webb lay on his back, limbs arranged with an almost formal precision. No trauma to the face. No visible wounds at all, which was the problem. The body bore no signs of violence—no bruising, no lacerations, no defensive marks. His eyes stared upward, pupils dilated to the size of coins. His skin had already begun the waxy transition that happened in the hours after death. She noted the clothing—designer trainers, expensive jeans, a vintage band t-shirt that probably cost more than Reeves' monthly rent. Webb hadn't struggled. Hadn't run. "Forensics give you anything preliminary?" Quinn rolled the body's wrist gently. No defensive wounds. No needle marks. She sniffed near the mouth and nose. Faint sweetness. Almonds. "They're saying initial tox screen shows nothing conventional. Waiting on the full panel." Reeves finally glanced down at her. "But here's the thing, Detective—there's no sign of how he got here." Quinn stood, her knees protesting. She'd been at this too long for the positions to feel natural anymore. "Explain." "No door opens onto this platform anymore. The entrances were sealed in '84. The shopkeeper's floorboards are intact—we checked. No hole. No access point. It's like he materialized here." She walked the perimeter. Her torch illuminated graffiti dating back decades. Gang tags layered over older symbols she almost recognized—circles and lines that might have been protective markings or might have been kids drawing random shapes in abandoned places. One symbol appeared repeatedly, burned into the wall as if heated from behind. A spiral within a spiral. "How'd he get down here?" Quinn asked. "That's what I'm saying. He couldn't have." But someone had. Quinn examined the platform more carefully. Dust covered everything except for a three-foot-wide section where Webb had lain. There, the dust had been disturbed—not scattered, but arranged. Moved deliberately. She knelt and studied the pattern. Deliberate sweeping motions, radiating outward from where the body had been positioned. Someone had cleaned the spot. Prepared it. "Call the lab," Quinn said. "I want samples of everything in that cleaned area. Dust, debris, anything. And get me the security footage for this station going back two weeks." Reeves' expression shifted. "It's been dark for three years. No power, no cameras—" "Then get me footage of access points above. The shopkeeper. The surrounding buildings. Every camera for a three-block radius." Quinn straightened, her watch catching the light. "And find out who reported the noise. I want to speak with them." She climbed back up the platform steps, leaving Reeves to coordinate with uniformed officers. The air grew fresher as she ascended—still laden with London's perpetual damp, but better than the stagnant staleness of the station proper. Quinn emerged into the shop above to find the owner, a nervous man in his sixties, wringing his hands near the register. The shop sold curiosities—old maps, obscure books, items that belonged in museum archives rather than in a grubby Camden storefront. One shelf displayed compasses of various sizes and styles. Several were positioned to point in different directions despite sitting beside each other. That detail registered, though she couldn't articulate why it mattered yet. "You heard the noise," Quinn said. Not a question. The shopkeeper nodded rapidly. "Three hours ago. Sounded like something massive fell. I thought the building was collapsing." He paused. "That was before I found the boy." "You went down?" "Of course I went down. My building." "Brave." Quinn moved through the shop, examining items. A leather satchel hung near the back wall. Books overflowed from shelves—occult texts, ancient history, grimoires with titles in languages she didn't recognize. Someone who frequented this shop would have access to knowledge that normal people didn't possess. Someone like the clique she'd been monitoring for six months. "Did you hear anything unusual before the noise?" Quinn asked. "Voices? Movement? Anything at all?" "No, Detective. It was quiet all afternoon." Too quiet. Staged quiet. Quinn returned to the street and called Eva Kowalski. The researcher picked up on the third ring, her voice groggy with sleep. "Tell me about protective sigils used in ritual work," Quinn said without preamble. A pause. Then: "Detective Quinn? It's past midnight." "I'm aware. Sigils." Eva's tone sharpened, moving from sleep-confused to alert. "They're used to contain energy. Mark boundaries. Sometimes to direct or amplify supernatural forces. Why?" "Send me everything you have on spiral patterns used in occult practice." "Quinn, what's happened?" She ended the call and stood in the empty street, listening. Traffic hummed in the distance. Somewhere overhead, London slept. But beneath the shop, in that sealed station, something had happened that the conventional murder investigation wanted to explain away as overdose or unknown cause. Webb's pupils dilated. The sweetness on his breath. The precise arrangement of his body on a deliberately cleaned section of platform. The complete absence of conventional method. Quinn had spent eighteen years learning that crime followed patterns. But three years ago, she'd learned there were patterns that existed outside the normal world—the kind that had taken DS Morris on a case that ended in his death and left her with more questions than the official reports provided. She studied the shop once more. Someone had prepared that station carefully. Someone with knowledge of ritual work and access to a location sealed from the public for nearly forty years. The compass collection in the shop window caught her attention again—each one pointing in a different direction. Each one useless except to someone who knew exactly what they were actually measuring. Quinn's fingers traced the verdigris-marked compass on her watch strap—a compass that pointed toward things others couldn't see.