Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYGMSNSGHZ45S0D74ZCA4X

The train tunnel stretched into darkness beyond the flashlight beams, its Victorian-era tiles slick with moisture that gleamed like scattered glass. Detective Harlow Quinn crouched beside the body, her knees protesting against the cold stone floor, and studied what remained of Marcus Webb. Webb lay on his back near the old platform's edge, one arm flung out as if reaching for something—or someone. His face was frozen in an expression she'd seen only a handful of times in eighteen years: pure, undiluted terror. The kind that didn't come from a fist or a knife or even a gun. This came from somewhere deeper. "Detective Quinn?" A uniformed officer appeared at her elbow, breath fogging in the chill air. "DS Park. I was first on scene." Quinn didn't look up. "Time of death?" "Medical examiner's guessing sometime between ten PM and midnight. But here's the thing—" Park hesitated. "No visible cause of death. No wounds, no trauma that we can see. Coroner's going to have to do a full workup." "Has someone notified the family?" "Brother. He's on his way." Quinn finally stood, her joints cracking, and took in the full breadth of the platform. Old advertising posters, faded and peeling, still clung to the walls—Lyle's Golden Syrup, Player's Please, ghosts of London's industrial past. The tracks themselves had been decommissioned decades ago, the third rail long dead, but the tunnel still breathed with a cold, stale wind that seemed to come from nowhere. "Who found him?" "Couple of kids, apparently. Urban explorers, they said. Sneaked down through the old maintenance access at Camden." Park consulted his notebook. "They ran straight to the station above and flagged down a constable." "And they didn't touch anything?" "They're shaken up but cooperative. Waiting topside." Quinn walked the perimeter, her boots echoing in the empty space. The beam of her torch swept across the platform, catching the glint of something near the body's outstretched hand. She stopped, crouched again, and fished a small object from the dust. A brass compass, its face etched with symbols she didn't recognize. The needle spun lazily, indifferent to the laws of magnetism, and then settled pointing directly at the tunnel's far end. "What have we got there?" "Compass," Quinn said, turning it over in her palm. The casing was green with age, the metal worn smooth like it had been handled frequently. "Unusual one." "Maybe he was a collector. These old stations are popular with the antiques crowd." "Maybe." Quinn didn't believe it. The compass felt warm against her skin, warmer than the surrounding air, and the needle still pointed deeper into the tunnel as if pulling toward something. She slipped it into an evidence bag and continued her sweep. The scene told a story—or tried to. A wallet with identification, a phone with a cracked screen, keys to a flat in Kentish Town. Nothing appeared stolen. No signs of struggle. Marcus Webb, forty-three, accountant, no prior record, appeared to have simply walked into an abandoned tunnel and died of... what? Heart failure? Exposure? She'd seen enough bodies to know when something didn't fit. "Park, what were his clothes?" "Sorry?" "His clothes. What was he wearing?" Park frowned. "Uh, suit. Dark suit. Shirt, tie. Shoes were—" He paused, something occurring to him. "Shoes were missing." Quinn looked down. Webb's feet were bare, the socks torn, as if he'd been walking for some distance. "He walked here barefoot?" "I—no, I don't know. That's—" Park shook his head. "That's weird, right? That's weird." "Find me the shoes." She moved toward the tunnel's entrance, where the modern world intruded in the form of yellow police tape and the distant hum of the active station above. Her torch found the old maintenance stairwell, its iron grating rusted but intact, and something else. Scuff marks. Drag marks, actually, running parallel to the wall. "Here." She crouched and examined the gouges in the dust. "Someone pulled something. Or someone." "Could be the body. Maybe he was dragged." "Maybe." Quinn followed the marks, which led toward a service door set into the tunnel wall, half-hidden by shadow. The door hung open, its lock torn clean from the frame. "This go anywhere?" Park caught up to her, his face pale in the torchlight. "I—nobody checked that. We assumed it was a maintenance closet or something." Quinn pushed through the door. Beyond lay a narrow corridor, newer than the rest of the station, with pipes running along the ceiling and modern electrical conduit lining the walls. The air here was different—warmer, almost humid, carrying a faint smell she couldn't place. Something between copper and ozone. The compass in her pocket grew warm against her thigh. She pressed on, Park calling after her, until the corridor opened into a vast chamber that shouldn't have existed. The space was filled with stalls and tables, some wooden, some metal, many draped in velvet or chain or things that looked like preserved skin. Objects she couldn't name sat behind glass cases or hung from hooks. The beam of her torch caught sigils painted on the walls, symbols that matched the compass in her pocket. The Veil Market. The name surfaced unbidden, pulled from some rumor she'd half-heard years ago, a case file she'd dismissed as nonsense. "Detective Quinn!" Park appeared behind her, breathing hard. "We need to get back. This is—this isn't—" "Evidence collection," she said, her voice flat. "This is a crime scene now." "Ma'am, this is a protected location. The Commissioner's office specifically—" "The Commissioner can come down here and explain that himself." She moved between the stalls, her torch sweeping across their contents. Jars of something that stirred when she passed. Folded papers that whispered when the light touched them. A cage containing what might have been a bird, except it had too many eyes. And then she found it: a stall with nothing on display except a single chair, its surface worn smooth. Behind it sat a woman in grey robes, her face obscured by shadow. "You're trespassing," the woman said. Her voice resonated strangely, as if coming from multiple throats. "This is not your realm." "Crime scene doesn't care about realms." Quinn held up her badge. "There's a dead man in tunnel four. You know anything about that?" Silence. The woman leaned forward, and Quinn caught a glimpse of features that were almost human—but not quite. The eyes were wrong. The smile was wrong. "The accountant came seeking answers," the woman said. "He wanted to find what he'd lost. The compass showed him the way." "And what killed him?" "The same thing that kills all who seek what they cannot understand." The woman gestured toward the chamber's far end, where the air seemed to tear, where something beyond comprehension waited. "He saw the Veil. His mind could not hold it." Park grabbed her arm. "Detective, we need to leave. Now." Quinn didn't resist. She let herself be pulled away, but she turned back once, fixing the image in her mind. The torn air. The impossible geometry. The thing that had killed Marcus Webb not with violence but with revelation. Back in the tunnel, Park was already calling for backup, for specialists, for anyone who might know what to do with a crime scene that extended into somewhere that shouldn't exist. Quinn stood alone beside the body, the compass heavy in the evidence bag. The evidence didn't add up because it wasn't meant to. Marcus Webb hadn't been murdered in any conventional sense. He'd walked into a place he didn't understand, seen something no human was meant to see, and his mind had simply... stopped. But there was still the matter of the shoes. She walked back toward the service corridor, following the scuff marks she'd found earlier. They led past the chamber entrance, deeper into the passages, toward a second exit—a maintenance ladder that climbed up toward the surface. And there, at the base of the ladder, she found them. Two shoes, placed neatly side by side. Not tossed aside. Not lost. Placed. Someone had taken the time to remove them. Someone had made sure Marcus Webb walked those final steps barefoot. She thought of the terror frozen on his face. The reaching arm. Not reaching for help, she realized now. Reaching for the thing that had killed him. She thought of the woman in grey, of what she'd said. The accountant came seeking answers. And she thought of the watch on her own wrist, the worn leather band she'd never removed, the one that had belonged to Morris. Her partner, lost three years ago on a case that made no sense, that still kept her awake at night. Morris had been investigating something. Something that didn't fit. Something that led him here, maybe. To this tunnel. To this market. To whatever waited beyond. Quinn pulled out her phone and dialed a number she hadn't called in months—the incident room, the cold case file, the investigation that had been quietly shelved. "This is Detective Quinn," she said. "I need the Morris file reopened." She ended the call and looked back toward the darkness where the Veil Market waited. She finally understood what she'd been missing. The case that had taken Morris wasn't separate from her life. It wasn't some unrelated tragedy. It was here, in the spaces between, in the world that existed alongside the one she knew. And she was going to find it.