Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYT5B9C8AQB72Q4QHT2GS5

Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, a rhythmic tapping that echoed off the curved, tiled walls of the abandoned station. The air here tasted of ozone and old iron, a metallic tang that clung to the back of the throat. Harlow Quinn adjusted her cuffs, the leather of her watch strap snapping against her wrist. She hated the underground. It smelled of secrets kept too long. She stepped over a discarded ticket barrier, rusted into a permanent sculpture of refusal, and moved deeper into the platform where the emergency lighting cast long, sickly orange shadows. "You're late." Eva Kowalski stood near the edge of the tracks, her back to the tunnel mouth. She hugged her worn leather satchel tight against her chest, her round glasses reflecting the flickering light. A strand of curly red hair escaped her clip, and she tucked it behind her ear with a trembling hand. "Traffic on the Euston Road. And the token took three minutes to find." Harlow stopped beside her. She didn't look at the body yet. She looked at the floor. Dust. Lots of it. Undisturbed except for a single set of footprints leading to the centre of the platform. Eva’s. "He's fresh," Eva murmured, her voice barely rising above the drip of the water. "Rigor hasn't even set in properly." Harlow finally directed her gaze to the victim. A man, perhaps fifty, dressed in a pinstripe suit that cost more than Harlow earned in a month. He lay on his back, arms spread wide in a grotesque imitation of a snow angel. But it was the head that drew the eye. It was turned completely backward, the neck a shattered ruin of vertebrae and flesh, facing the tunnel mouth while his chest stared up at the soot-stained ceiling. "Neck snapped," Harlow said, her voice flat. "Clean break." "It's not that simple." Eva shifted her weight, scuffing the dusty tiles with her boot. "Look at the pattern on the floor. The chalk." Harlow knelt. Her knees popped, a loud sound in the silence. She pulled a small penlight from her pocket and clicked it on. A white circle of illumination cut through the gloom. Around the body, someone had drawn a intricate series of lines. Sharp angles, intersecting circles, symbols that looked like nothing Harlow had seen in her eighteen years on the force. They glowed faintly, a pale phosphorescence that seemed to pulse with the rhythm of the dripping water. "Alchemy," Eva said, leaning in. "Old stuff. Pre-Roman. This isn't just a murder, Harlow. It's a containment breach." "A containment breach that twists a man's head one hundred and eighty degrees?" "The backlash from a failed extraction." Eva opened her satchel, pulling out a heavy, leather-bound book. She flipped through pages filled with diagrams that made Harlow’s eyes water. "If you try to pull something through the Veil without a proper anchor, the physical reality snaps back. The kinetic energy has to go somewhere." "So the Veil killed him?" "The Veil, or his own incompetence." Eva licked her thumb, turning another page. "He was a fence, we know that. He tried to smuggle something out of the Market, something volatile. The wards activated." Harlow stood up. She shone her light on the corpse's hands. They were empty. The fingers were curled, clawing at the air. She looked at the chalk lines again. They were precise, carefully drawn, but there was a smudge. Right near the victim's left foot. "Who found him?" "A Rat-catcher. Scavenging for scrap down the deep vents. He saw the glow and ran." "He touch anything?" "No. He was too terrified." Harlow walked a slow circle around the body. She kept her light on the ground. The dust layer was thick, a grey blanket over the old Victorian tiles. It was perfect. Pristine. Except for Eva’s prints and the victim’s dragged path. "Eva." "Hmm?" "Magic backlash. Does it leave footprints?" "What? No. It's energy. Kinetic discharge." "Does it weigh anything?" "The energy? No. Why?" Harlow pointed her light at the victim's chest. The pinstripe suit was soaked with blood, but the fabric around the shoulders was torn. Not sliced. Torn. As if something heavy had been hooked there. "If the kinetic energy snapped his neck," Harlow said, stepping closer to the wall, "it throws him backward. Physics still applies, even down here." "He fell." "He didn't fall. He was placed." Eva looked up from her book, frowning. "The position is consistent with a vertical force spike. The chalk aligns with the fracture points." "The chalk aligns with the narrative someone wants you to see." Harlow moved to the tunnel entrance, a few yards away from the body. She ran her hand along the soot-stained brickwork. "You said he tried to smuggle something out. What if he was successful?" "Then the Market would have taken his soul. They wouldn't leave the body." "Exactly. They wouldn't leave the body." Harlow crouched by the tunnel wall. "Look here." Eva sighed, closed her book, and walked over. "What am I looking at?" "Scuff marks. Deep ones. Someone braced here." "Probably the victim. He was struggling with the spell." "He was wearing loafers, Evie. Italian leather. Thin soles. These marks were made by boots. Heavy, treaded boots. Someone stood here, pushing against this wall for leverage." Harlow returned to the body. She knelt again, ignoring the smell of copper and bowel. She grabbed the victim’s jacket lapel and pulled the torso slightly to the side. "What are you doing? You're disturbing the scene!" "I'm looking for the bruising." "Eva, shut up and look." Harlow pointed the penlight at the man's back, right between the shoulder blades. "There. See that discolouration?" A dark, mottled patch of skin, shaped like a heel mark. "Someone stood on him." "Stood on him?" "To hold him down. While they twisted his head." Eva adjusted her glasses, squinting. "But... the chalk. The sigils. They're active. You can feel the hum in the air." "Those aren't containment sigils. They're a distraction." Harlow stood and brushed the dust from her trousers. "A magic trick. No pun intended. The killer draws some pretty lights on the floor, breaks a neck, and waits for the first occultist to come along and scream 'backlash'." "So it's a mundane murder?" "There's nothing mundane about the Veil Market, Eva. But the method? The method is human." Harlow walked back to the victim's pockets. She patted them down methodically. Wallet, keys, a handkerchief. She felt something hard and small in the breast pocket. She pulled it out. A small brass compass. The face was etched with protective sigils, green with verdigris. The needle spun wildly, twitching like a trapped insect. "Is that...?" "A Veil Compass." Harlow held it up. "Points to rifts. Or portals." Eva reached for it, her eyes wide. "That's high-tier contraband. That alone is worth five years in a Hole." "It's broken." Harlow watched the needle. It wasn't spinning north. It wasn't spinning toward the tunnel. It was spinning in a tight, frantic circle, pointing nowhere. "It's not broken." Eva took it gently from Harlow's hand. She turned it over. "The mechanism is fine. It's just confused. There's too much interference. Too many residual energies." "Or it's pointing at something very close." Harlow looked around the platform again. Her eyes narrowed. "If he was killed for this, or he was using this to find something..." "It tracks supernatural energy," Eva said. "If the killer has whatever the victim stole, the Compass should point to them." "Unless the killer is the source." Harlow scanned the darkness of the station. The flickering orange lights cast deep shadows in the corners where the curved walls met the ceiling. Rats scuttled in the distance. The dripping water continued its relentless counting. "Eva, get behind me." "What? Why?" "Turn the Compass off." "I can't just turn it off. It's not a—" "Eva. Cover the face. Now." Eva slapped a hand over the brass face. The sudden silence seemed to amplify the sound of breathing that wasn't theirs. Harlow drew her service weapon, a heavy black automatic. She aimed it at the empty space near the ticket barrier. "The dust," Harlow whispered. "What?" "The footprints. There was only the victim's. And yours." "Yes?" "There's no exit track. Our killer stood on the victim, twisted his head, drew the chalk... and then vanished." "Portals," Eva breathed. "He used a portal." "Maybe. Or maybe he's still here." Harlow gestured with the barrel of the gun toward the shadows behind the barrier. "That compass wasn't spinning, Evie. It was oscillating. Between two points." "The body and the wall," Eva realized. "Exactly. And I didn't see a rift in the wall." A sound scraped across the tiles—the distinctive grate of a boot heel dragging over stone. It came from directly above them. Harlow looked up. On the top of the arched tunnel entrance, clinging to the brickwork like a spider, a figure crouched. It wore a tattered coat that blended with the soot. Goggles reflected the dim light from above. The figure smiled, a flash of white teeth in the gloom, and raised a hand. In its palm, a small, jagged piece of bone began to glow. "Down!" Harlow grabbed Eva by the shoulder and shoved her toward the ground.