Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTY8ZN8SSNG18B5901DXANM

Rain slicked the cracked tiles of the abandoned CamdenTube station, turning the platform into a mirror for the flickering work lights. Detective Harlow Quinn stepped over the yellow tape, her boots crunching on shattered glass and something that looked like dried moss. The air tasted of ozone and wet dog, a sharp contrast to the usual stale beer and urine of a London underground closure. "Keep your mask on, Harlow," called PC Evans from the edge of the cordon. He fiddled with the strap of his respirator, eyes wide behind the plastic shield. "Metro Hazmat says the readings are off the charts. Some kind of gas leak, they reckon." Quinn ignored him. She pushed past the tape, her gaze sweeping the platform. Three uniformed officers stood near a bench, talking in hushed tones, their breath visible despite the mild October evening. In the center of the platform lay the body. Or what remained of it. A man in a tattered suit sprawled on his back, arms outstretched. His skin held a grey, waxy sheen, and frost feathered across his clothes, melting into puddles that steamed in the damp air. No blood. Not a drop. Just that unnatural cold radiating from the corpse. "Gas leak doesn't freeze a man solid in twenty degrees," Quinn muttered. She crouched beside the body, the worn leather of her watch brushing against her trousers. She checked the time. 02:14. Three hours since the call came in. Evans shuffled closer, keeping a safe distance. "Look at the position, Guv. Arms out. Could be a seizure. Maybe he inhaled whatever this is, convulsed, and the chemical reaction caused the frost. Happened down in the tunnels near King's Cross last year. Industrial coolant leak." Quinn ran a gloved finger along the man's jawline. Sharp, rigid. Rigor mortis had set in fast, too fast. She tilted his head. The pupils were dilated, black pools swallowing the iris. "Seizure victims don't arrange themselves like starfish, Evans. And they don't lose every drop of blood while freezing." She stood, brushing dust from her knees. "Where's the wallet? Phone? Anything?" "Pocket's empty," Evans said, pointing a gloved hand. "Robbery gone wrong? Maybe he wandered down here, junkie looking for a spot, got jumped." "Junkies don't wear bespoke suits tailored in Savile Row." Quinn walked a slow circle around the body. Her eyes caught the floor again. The frost didn't spread evenly. It formed a pattern, a rough circle around the corpse, but broken in one spot. A gap, pointing toward the dark tunnel mouth leading deeper into the earth. "See that?" She pointed to the gap in the frost. "Something dragged him. Or he crawled." "Dragged?" Evans squinted. "No drag marks in the grime, Guv. Just the frost." "Exactly." Quinn moved toward the tunnel entrance. The darkness swallowed the beam of her torch, but the air grew heavier, thicker. The smell of ozone intensified, making the hair on her arms stand up. She remembered Morris. Three years ago. Another body, another impossible set of circumstances she couldn't explain then. The file still sat on her desk, gathering dust and frustration. "Stay here," she ordered. "But protocol—" "Protocol says secure the scene. I'm going to see where that gap leads." She stepped onto the tracks. Gravel shifted under her boots. Ten paces in, the light from the platform faded. The silence pressed against her eardrums, absolute and suffocating. No dripping water, no distant rumble of trains. Just the hum of the air, low and vibrating. Her torch beam cut through the gloom, illuminating graffiti that seemed to shift when she wasn't looking directly at it. Tags twisted into symbols she didn't recognize, glowing faintly before dimming again. She stopped. On the wall, someone had drawn a circle with a line through it, using what looked like charcoal, but the lines shimmered with a faint blue residue. Quinn reached out, hovering her hand near the mark. The air rippled, like heat haze off asphalt. "Detective?" Evans's voice echoed from the platform, thin and distorted. "You're walking into a dead end. There's a collapsed section fifty yards down. Engineering logs confirm it." "Logs don't account for this." She traced the symbol. The vibration in the air spiked, making her teeth ache. She turned back to the body. From this angle, the frost pattern made more sense. It wasn't just a circle. It was a funnel. The cold hadn't emanated from the man; it had been pulled *from* him. sucked out through that gap in the frost, drawn toward the tunnel. Quinn returned to the platform, her mind racing. She crouched by the victim's head again. Under the collar of his suit, barely visible against the grey skin, sat a small burn mark. Circular. Perfect. "Evans, bag his hands. Don't touch the skin directly." "You think he held something?" "I think something held him." She scanned the area again, looking for what didn't belong. The moss on the tiles. It wasn't growing from the cracks. It clustered in specific spots, forming a trail leading from the tunnel mouth to the body. Tiny, bioluminescent spores clung to the man's shoes. "Bioluminescent moss doesn't grow in the Tube," she said, more to herself than Evans. "Maybe it's a new strain. Pollution does weird things." Evans shrugged, adjusting his mask again. "Look, Harlow, let's wait for the specialists. We don't know what we're dealing with here. Could be toxic." "We're dealing with a man drained of life and frozen from the inside out in a locked station." Quinn pulled a small notebook from her pocket. She sketched the frost pattern, the gap, the symbol on the wall. "Someone brought him here. Or something did." She stood and walked to the edge of the platform, shining her light down the track again. The moss trail continued, disappearing into the dark. But there was something else. A glint of metal half-buried in the gravel near the tunnel entrance. Quinn hopped down to the tracks again, ignoring Evans's protest. She approached the glint. It was a small brass object, tarnished with green verdigris. She picked it up with her tweezers. A compass. But the face was etched with strange sigils, and the needle didn't point north. It spun lazily, then snapped to point straight down the tunnel, trembling. "Compass?" Evans called out. "Why would a dead man have a broken compass?" "It's not broken." The needle pulsed with a faint blue light, matching the symbol on the wall. "And he didn't have it. It was dropped. By whoever—or whatever—took him." Quinn held the compass up. The needle vibrated violently now, pulling toward the darkness. The air pressure dropped, popping her ears. The moss on the walls flared brighter, illuminating a section of the tunnel that shouldn't exist. The bricks seemed to dissolve into a swirling mist, revealing a glimpse of a market stall draped in shadowy fabrics, voices chattering in a language that hurt her head. "Evans," she said, her voice steady despite the chill running down her spine. "Call it in. Tell them we have a potential supernatural incident. And get me the file on DS Morris. Now." "Supernatural?" Evans laughed, a nervous, brittle sound. "Guv, you've been working too hard. It's a gas leak. A weird chemical spill." Quinn watched the mist swirl. A figure moved within it, tall and indistinct, reaching out. The compass needle jerked, pointing straight at the apparition. "Gas leaks don't open doors, Evans." She tucked the compass into her evidence bag, her fingers tightening around the plastic. "And I don't believe in coincidences. Not anymore." The figure in the mist raised a hand. The compass in Quinn's bag grew hot against her thigh. She didn't flinch. She just watched, waiting for the next move, her instincts screaming that the real investigation had only just begun. The frost on the body cracked, a sharp sound like a gunshot in the quiet station.