Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYJNF34KVBV1JQJ7CBQJZD

Detective Harlow Quinn ducked under the crime scene tape at the Camden Town station entrance. The Victorian tiles above the stairwell yawned like a broken tooth, blackened and cracked. She checked the worn leather watch on her left wrist—06:23. Three hours since the call came in, and her salt-and-pepper hair still held the damp from the morning drizzle. She descended. Her boots struck concrete with military precision. The air down here tasted of rust and stagnant water. According to the station logs, this branch had flooded last Tuesday. Engineers sealed it off. Yet here lay a body. Eva Kowalski crouched beside the corpse, her curly red hair escaping from a hasty bun. She didn't look up. "You're late." "Traffic." Quinn stopped three feet from the body, hands clasped behind her back, her sharp jaw set. "What do we have?" "Male, mid-forties. No ID." Eva's fingers hovered over the victim's chest. She wore no gloves, Quinn noticed. "Lividity suggests he's been here three days. Maybe four." "Impossible." Quinn's brown eyes narrowed. Her military bearing kept her stance rigid. "The flood didn't recede until yesterday morning. This platform was underwater." Eva finally looked up. Her green eyes, magnified by round glasses, held something Quinn couldn't read. "Exactly." The body lay sprawled near the tunnel mouth, dry as dust. His clothes—Victorian-style frock coat, absurd for modern London—showed no water damage. No algae. No bloating. Yet the platform walls bore the high-water mark, a dark stain four feet up the tilework. Quinn circled the corpse. Her leather watch strap creaked. "Staged. Someone dumped him here after the pumps finished." "With no footprints?" Eva gestured to the dust coating the platform. Only their own boot prints disturbed the gray film. "No drag marks? And look at his hands." The victim's fingers clutched something white. Quinn crouched, her movement economical. She pried the fingers apart. A token fell into her palm. Carved bone. Etched with symbols that seemed to shift when she blinked. "What is this?" Eva's breath caught. "A key. To the Veil Market." "The what?" "Underground market. Moves locations every full moon." Eva tucked a curl behind her left ear, fingers trembling. "It occupies abandoned spaces. Tube stations, crypts, sewers. This station, three nights ago, wasn't flooded. Not for them." Quinn stood. The bone token bit into her palm. "You're suggesting supernatural nonsense?" "I'm suggesting the water didn't touch this platform because the Market was here. They have... ways of keeping spaces separate. Dry pockets in flooded tunnels." Eva opened her worn leather satchel, withdrew a brass compass. "This might convince you." The compass casing bore verdigris, ancient and green. Quinn took it. The face was etched with sigils that matched the bone token. The needle spun wildly, then locked. It pointed at the tunnel wall. Solid concrete. Thirty feet of earth and iron beyond that. "Defective," Quinn said. "Look again." The needle trembled. It pointed not at the wall, but through it. Downward. Into bedrock. Quinn's military training warred with the evidence of her senses. The compass felt warm. Alive. Her partner Morris had died three years ago in a case with unexplained circumstances. A locked room. No entry. No exit. Just a body and symbols carved into the floor. She looked at the victim's frock coat. The bone token. The compass spinning toward nothing. "There's a rift," Eva said. "A door. The Market moves by using them. This man was a vendor. Or a buyer. He died three days ago, Detective. He just didn't die here." Quinn's jaw tightened. She walked to the tunnel wall. Pressed her palm against cold concrete. The compass needle quivered. Pointed at her hand. Through it. "Show me," Quinn said. Eva smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "The Market requires payment. The bone token will open the way, but only if you're willing to see what's on the other side." Quinn looked at the body. At her watch. Three years since Morris died in a room that couldn't be entered. Three days since this man died in a tunnel that couldn't be dry. She closed her fist around the token. "Open it," she said.