AI "Hold the bloody torch steady, Chopra. If I wanted a strobe light effect, I’d have gone to a nightclub in Soho."
Detective Harlow Quinn didn't wait for the apology. She snapped her latex gloves on with a sharp *thwack * that echoed against the curved, dripping brickwork of the storm drain. The air down here sat heavy in the lungs, tasting of ancient copper and the peculiar, sweet rot of the Thames at low tide.
"Sorry, Guv. Footing's slippery," DC Chopra muttered, the beam of his heavy Maglite jittering over the wet silhouette crumpled against the far wall. "Smell's enough to knock a horse out."
"Breathe through your mouth." Quinn stepped over a rusted bicycle wheel half-buried in the silt. Her boots sank an inch into the muck, but her posture remained rigid, a habit drilled into her by the Royal Military Police nearly two decades ago. "And keep the light on his face. I want to see what surprised him."
The victim was male, Caucasian, mid-thirties. He wore a bespoke charcoal suit that likely cost more than Chopra’s annual salary, now ruined by the black sludge coating the tunnel floor. He wasn't just dead; he was staged . Seated upright, legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded politely in his lap.
To the untrained eye, he looked like a banker who had taken a wrong turn and had a heart attack. To Quinn, he looked like a message.
"Wallet's still in the jacket pocket," Chopra noted, swinging the light over the man’s chest. "Rolex on the wrist. Not a robbery, then."
"Observation noted." Quinn crouched. Her knees popped, a sound lost under the rhythmic *drip-drip-drip * from a cracked pipe overhead. She checked the time on her own wrist—a worn leather strap, the face scratched from years of abuse. 02:14. The witching hour for the chaotic and the damned.
She leaned in. The man’s eyes were wide open, staring fixedly at the darkness of the tunnel’s ceiling. The capillaries hadn’t burst. There was no petechial hemorrhaging.
"Drugs?" Chopra ventured, shifting his weight . "Bad batch of something form the City? We’ve had a few overdose cases with that new synthetic stuff."
"Look closer." Quinn pointed to the man's throat. "What do you see?"
Chopra leaned in, squinting behind the glare of the torch. " bruising. Distinct finger marks. Strangulation."
"Wrong." Quinn reached out, two fingers pressing against the victim’s jawline. It was rigid. "Rigor is setting in fast. Too fast for the ambient temperature down here. It’s barely ten degrees." She tilted the head back . The skin was pale, translucent almost, like parchment stretched over a wire frame. "And those aren't bruises."
She traced the dark, violet marks circling the neck. They weren't erratic splotches of violence. They were geometric. Perfect circles, spaced exactly an inch apart, bruising from the inside out.
"They look… burned," Chopra said, his voice dropping an octave .
"Frostbite," Quinn corrected. "Localized. Intense." She grabbed the victim's chin and forced the mouth open.
A puff of visible breath escaped the dead man’s lips, dissipating instantly in the damp air.
Chopra scrambled backward, his boots skidding on the slime. The torch beam swung wildly, illuminating the graffiti-scarred ceiling. "Jesus! Is he—did he just breathe?"
"Residual gas escaping. Basic biology, Constable. Pull yourself together." Quinn didn't flinch. She’d seen things that defied biology before. She’d seen what happened to Morris three years ago in a basement in Hackney, where the shadows had moved independently of the light. This? This was just physics behaving badly.
She peered into the open mouth. The tongue was black, necrotic. But resting on it, pristine and white, was a small, circular object.
Quinn retrieved a pair of long tweezers from her kit. With the precision of a surgeon, she reached in and clamped down on the object, withdrawing it slowly .
"Is that… bone?" Chopra asked, stepping back into the light’s circle, shame coloring his cheeks but curiosity winning out.
"A token." Quinn held it up. It was a disc of carved bone, no larger than a fifty-pence piece. Intricate carvings spiralled across its surface—not decorative, but functional . A map. Or a key.
"A token for what? An arcade?"
"Entry," Quinn said, her voice tight . She stood up, her 5'9" frame looming over the Constable. The shadows in the tunnel seemed to lengthen, reaching toward her boots. "There are markets in this city, Chopra, that don't sell fruit and veg. They sell things you need a permit to even think about."
She bagged the bone token, sealing the plastic with a snap.
"So, gang related?" Chopra asked, clearly desperate for a box to tick. "Some sort of initiation ritual?"
"If the gang studied Aramaic and dealt in alchemical contraband, sure." Quinn turned her attention back to the body. "Roll him over. I want to see the back of the jacket."
"Guv, forensics is going to pitch a fit if we move him before the photographer gets here."
"The tide is coming in, Constable. In twenty minutes, this crime scene will be underwater. Move him."
Chopra holstered the torch, grimacing as he grabbed the victim’s shoulder. With a grunt of effort, he heaved the stiffening corpse forward.
The back of the expensive charcoal suit was shredded . Not cut with a knife, but flayed . Three long, parallel tears revealed the skin beneath. And on the skin, carved deep enough to hit the white of the rib but surprisingly bloodless, was a symbol. A compass rose, but distorted. The north point didn't point toward the tunnel exit.
Quinn retrieved a physical compass from her pocket—standard issue. She held it over the body. The needle spun lazily , refusing to settle.
"Magnetic interference?" Chopra suggested. "There's high voltage cables running under the river."
"Interference doesn't draw pictures on skin." Quinn traced the air above the wound without touching it. The cold radiating from the body was palpable now, a refrigerator chill against her palm. "There's no blood, Chopra. Look at the ground."
The constable shone his light on the mud. A few scuffs, the imprint of their own boots, the bicycle wheel. But underneath the body? Nothing.
"He was killed elsewhere," Chopra deduced. "Dumped here."
"Killed elsewhere, drained of five liters of blood without spilling a drop, and then carried a mile down a storm drain without getting mud on his polished Oxfords?" Quinn pointed to the victim’s shoes. They were immaculate. "How do you explain that?"
Chopra stared at the shoes. "I... I can't."
"He walked here," Quinn said, the pieces clicking into place with a terrifying logic . "He walked here, sat down, and waited to die. Or he waited for something to come out of the wall and take what it was owed."
"That's impossible."
"Improbable. There's a difference." Quinn scanned the brick wall behind the body. It looked solid. Victorian engineering, endless layers of soot and grime. But at eye level, right where the victim had been staring, a brick was slightly discoloured. Lighter. Cleaner.
She stepped closer, peeling off a glove to press her bare hand against the damp stone. It vibrated . A low, hum barely registering on the fingertips.
"Check the pockets again," Quinn ordered. "Deep lining. Look for residue. Dust. Specifically, something that looks like verdigris or copper shavings."
"You think he was a metal worker?" Chopra rifled through the pockets again, less gingerly this time. "Nothing but lint and... wait." He pulled his hand out. On the tip of his latex glove glittered a fine, greenish dust. "You're a wizard, Guv."
"I'm a detective who pays attention." Quinn snatched the evidence bag from him. "He didn't just have a token. He had a Compass. A Veil Compass."
"A what?"
"A tracking device for things that don't want to be found." Quinn’s jaw tightened. The Clique. It had to be. They were sloppy this time, or arrogant. Leaving a courier out in the open like this.
"So where is it now?" Chopra asked, looking around the empty tunnel.
"Someone took it." Quinn turned back to the wall. The vibration under her hand stopped abruptly. The air pressure in the tunnel shifted, ears popping as if they had just descended rapidly in an elevator.
Chopra's beam swept toward the tunnel entrance. "Guv... the water."
A dark slurry of river water was cresting the lip of the walkway fifty yards down. The tide was turning faster than predicted.
"We need to go," Chopra urged.
"Not yet." Quinn pressed her ear to the brickwork where the victim had stared. Silence. Then, faint but distinct, the sound of dragging footsteps . *Inside * the wall.
"Guv!"
"He wasn't the target," Quinn whispered, the realization hitting her with the force of a physical blow. She pulled away from the wall, her brown eyes hard and glittering in the reflected torchlight. "He was the bait."
A metallic screech tore through the tunnel—the sound of a rusted sluice gate opening nearby. Not the tide. A flush.
"Run," Quinn commanded, her voice dropping the investigative detachedness for pure, military bark .
"What about the body?"
"Leave it! Move!"
She grabbed Chopra by the collar of his high-vis jacket and shoved him toward the exit just as the roar of rushing water echoed from the darkness deeper in the system. They scrambled over the slick bricks, boots slipping, the Maglite beam jerking wildly across the ceiling.
They hit the vertical iron ladder leading to the street level just as the black water surged past, swallowing the crime scene, the bicycle wheel, and the man in the charcoal suit.
Quinn hauled herself up the rungs, lungs burning, the cold damp clinging to her skin. She burst out into the cool London night air, gasping, Chopra tumbling out beside her onto the pavement of the industrial estate.
Rain had started to fall, mixing with the grime on her face.
Chopra rolled onto his back, panting. "We lost the evidence. The body... it's gone. Washed out to the estuary by now."
Quinn stood up, brushing the dirt from her trench coat. She reached into her pocket and fingered the small plastic bag containing the bone token. The evidence wasn't lost; the body was just the packaging. She had the receipt.
"Not all of it," Quinn said, watching the steam rise from a nearby manhole cover. "Get the car."
"Where are we going? The station?"
Quinn looked at the bone token through the plastic. The spiral carving seemed to shift under the amber streetlight. The victim had been at the entrance to the Veil Market. He'd been denied entry, stripped of his compass, and left to freeze from the inside out. Which meant the Market was close. And it was moving.
"No," Quinn said, walking toward the driver's side. "Camden. We have a train to catch, and I don't think it runs on the Northern Line."