Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTY065K05G9EVJV8XKYBY7C

The abandoned Tube station reeked of copper and something else Quinn couldn't name. Decades of decay had turned the platform into a monument to neglect—graffiti layered upon graffiti, tiles missing from the walls like broken teeth, and everywhere the particular damp that only London underground spaces seemed to cultivate. She descended the final concrete step with her worn leather watch catching what little light filtered from the torch clipped to her collar. The body lay near the northbound tracks, positioned with an almost ceremonial precision that made Quinn's jaw tighten. Male, thirties, throat slashed clean from ear to ear. Arterial spray had dried in a fan pattern across the tiles behind him, suggesting he'd still been standing when the blade found him. But that wasn't what bothered her. Detective Sergeant Corbyn emerged from the shadows near the ticket office, holding a clear evidence bag aloft. He was younger than Quinn by a decade, still carrying the eager efficiency of someone who hadn't yet learned that efficiency solved nothing in cases like this. "Victim's identified as Marcus Wendell, thirty-four," Corbyn said, his words echoing off the curved tunnel walls. "Local small business owner, import-export. Found by a homeless man around six this morning who called it in directly. No weapon recovered." Quinn crouched beside the body, her knees protesting. She'd stopped feeling apologetic about that years ago. The cut was deliberate, professional even—no hesitation marks, no sawing motion. One stroke and done. She examined the positioning again. His left arm lay across his chest, his right extended toward the track bed. His fingers were curled as though gripping something that no longer existed. "The spray pattern places him here when it happened," she said. "That's what the scene techs concluded," Corbyn confirmed, checking his notes. "Preliminary TOD between midnight and four a.m. The platform's been sealed off for eighteen months—council ordered it closed due to structural concerns. Nobody's supposed to be down here." Quinn straightened, her eyes moving across the scene with methodical precision. The techs had done adequate work, white markers placed at significant points. A single shoe lay three feet from the body, discarded or lost in a struggle. She focused on it, then back at Wendell's feet. He wore matching shoes, both laced. "Victim wearing shoes?" she asked. Corbyn checked his photographs. "Yeah, both on." "Then whose shoe is that?" Corbyn moved closer, his certainty faltering. "Could have come from before, during the station's operational days. Could be evidence from an entirely different incident." Quinn wasn't listening. She was moving deeper into the station, her torch sweeping across the platform's edge. The Tube station had a particular geography—the platform, the tracks, the space beneath the platform where rails ran and maintenance pipes curved through darkness. Her light caught something metallic wedged between the platform edge and the wall. She reached down, careful not to disturb more than necessary. A brass compass, verdigris green with age, lay in the gap. Its face bore markings that hurt to look at directly—sigils that seemed to shift when her peripheral vision caught them. Quinn held it up to the light, feeling its weight. "Corbyn. Come here." He arrived at her shoulder, squinting. "What is it?" "Tell me you've catalogued all evidence recovered at this scene." "Everything's been logged. That wasn't here during the initial sweep." Quinn turned the compass slowly in her palm. She'd held similar objects before, had seen things that her reports always managed to describe as something mundane. She thought of Morris, of the case three years ago where evidence stopped making sense, where the crime scene photographs showed things that shouldn't exist, where her partner had disappeared into a basement that was somehow deeper than any basement should be. "Wendell's body is positioned toward the tracks, but he didn't die there," Quinn continued, her thoughts aligning. "The spray pattern suggests he was vertical, yes, but the droplets have settled in a way that indicates movement after the initial cut. His left arm is placed deliberately across his chest. That's not a natural landing position for someone who's been attacked." Corbyn frowned, following her gaze to the bloodstain. "He bled out from the wound. Natural response would be to try and stem the flow." "Exactly. But his right hand is extended toward the tracks, toward the gap where I found this compass. His fingers are curled as though he was holding something and released it. Or it was taken from him." She held up the object, watching how the light seemed to bend around its surface wrongly. "What if Wendell didn't come here for a meeting? What if something was here already? What if the compass matters more than the body does?" Corbyn's face had gone pale. He'd worked with Quinn long enough to recognize when she'd shifted into that particular mode of thinking—the one that saw cases as having layers that most of the department preferred to ignore. "That's speculation," he said, but his voice lacked conviction. "Is it?" Quinn moved back toward the body, crouching again. This time she examined Wendell's clothing more carefully. Expensive jacket, custom tailored, but the collar bore traces of something that wasn't blood. Ash, perhaps, or dust that glowed faintly under her torch when she tilted it at the right angle. His pockets had been emptied, evidence markers showing their former contents—wallet, keys, mobile phone. All recovered and bagged. But there was something else. A slight discoloration on the underside of his right wrist, barely visible. Quinn pulled an evidence glove from her pocket and pushed back the sleeve of his jacket. The mark wasn't a bruise. It was a perfect circular indentation, about two inches in diameter, with faint lines radiating from its center like the spokes of a wheel. "He was holding this," Quinn said, elevating the compass again. "Not carrying it. Holding it. The moment something else entered this platform, he tried to get rid of it. Threw it away. That's why it ended up in the gap." Corbyn stepped backward, his shoulders hitting the tiled wall. "Quinn, that's impossible. The station's sealed. It's been sealed. There's no way anyone could have—" "Could have what?" She stood, watching him carefully. "Come down here without using the stairs? Without leaving any trace?" He didn't answer. She'd learned long ago that sometimes the worst part of her job wasn't solving the crime. It was watching her colleagues realize that the world contained problems that didn't fit neatly into police procedure. She pocketed the compass carefully, feeling its warmth through the fabric. Behind her, somewhere in the deeper darkness of the tunnel, a sound echoed—not quite footsteps, not quite anything that could be simply explained.