Run: 2026-02-20-01KHXQ129HYDB4V3JV7ZB8QZ6Y

The abandoned Tube station reeked of damp concrete and something older—something that clung to the back of the throat like rust. Detective Harlow Quinn stepped over the yellow police tape, her boots scuffing against the gritty platform. The air was thick with the hum of fluorescent lights strung up by the forensics team, casting jagged shadows across the peeling posters of long-defunct theatre productions. She adjusted the cuff of her leather watch, the strap worn smooth from years of use, and exhaled through her nose. Another strange one. Another scene that didn’t add up. “You’re late,” DS Tom Whitaker said, not looking up from his notebook. He was hunched over a body—or what was left of one. The victim lay sprawled near the edge of the platform, limbs twisted at unnatural angles, as if he’d been tossed aside by something stronger than gravity. His face was frozen in an expression Harlow had seen too many times: not just fear, but the dawning comprehension of something impossible. “Traffic,” Harlow lied. She’d been standing outside for five minutes, steeling herself. The station’s energy was wrong. Not just the usual weight of death, but something else—something that made the hairs on her arms prickle. She kept her voice level. “What’ve we got?” Whitaker finally looked up, his boyish face creased with the kind of frown that meant he was already leaning toward the easiest explanation. “Male, mid-thirties. No ID, but his prints flagged him as Daniel Mercer—a low-level dealer with ties to the Camden drug trade. Overdose, probably. Fents with a twist.” Harlow crouched beside the body, her sharp jaw tightening. Mercer’s pupils were blown, sure, but his skin wasn’t the waxy gray of an OD. It was mottled, like bruises blooming beneath the surface, and his fingertips—she leaned closer—were blackened, as if burned from the inside out. “He didn’t just OD,” she said. “Look at his hands.” Whitaker shrugged. “New cut. Something cooked wrong. You know how these guys are—always chasing the next high.” Harlow didn’t answer. She reached into her coat pocket and snapped on a pair of latex gloves, then carefully lifted Mercer’s left wrist. The skin there was slick with something dark and viscous, not blood. It smelled metallic, but wrong—like copper left too long in the rain. She wiped a finger against it and held it up to the light. The substance stretched like syrup, iridescent in the harsh glow. “What the hell is that?” Whitaker muttered. “Not heroin.” Harlow stood, stripping off the gloves. “Get me a tox screen, but I’m telling you, this isn’t just another junkie in the wrong place.” She turned in a slow circle, taking in the rest of the platform. The station had been abandoned for decades, but the graffiti here wasn’t the usual tagger scrawl. The symbols etched into the walls were precise, angular—almost like circuit diagrams, if circuits were drawn by someone who understood things that shouldn’t exist. Her fingers twitched. She’d seen something like them before. Three years ago. Morris’s case. She shoved the thought down. “Where’s his stash?” Whitaker jerked his chin toward a crumpled paper bag half-hidden beneath the bench. Harlow knelt again, careful not to touch it directly. Inside, nestled in a bed of torn newspaper, was a small brass compass. Its casing was etched with sigils, the metal pitted with verdigris, the needle quivering as if caught between two poles. She didn’t need to pick it up to know it wasn’t pointing north. Her breath hitched. “Detective?” She ignored Whitaker, her pulse hammering in her throat. The compass was warm, though the station was cold. She could feel it, even through the latex—a low, thrumming vibration, like a live wire humming just beyond hearing. The needle flicked wildly, then settled, pointing toward the far end of the platform, where the tunnel yawned into darkness. Toward the tracks. Harlow stood abruptly. “Where’s the rest of the team?” “Finishing up the sweep. Why?” She didn’t answer. Instead, she walked to the edge of the platform and peered into the tunnel. The rails gleamed dully, but the darkness beyond seemed… thicker. Not just absence of light, but something solid, something that pushed back when she tried to focus on it. Her fingers curled into fists. “Quinn.” Whitaker’s voice was sharp now, uneasy. “What are you looking at?” She didn’t take her eyes off the tunnel. “You ever hear of the Veil Market?” A beat of silence. Then, a nervous laugh. “Christ, not this again. You’re not still on that supernatural kick, are you? After Morris—” “Shut up.” Her voice was low, dangerous. She took a step forward, then another, her boots echoing on the concrete. The compass in the bag pulsed in time with her footsteps. The air grew heavier, pressing against her skin like a physical weight. She could taste ozone now, sharp and electric. Then she saw it. A flicker of movement in the dark. Not a rat, not a trick of the light—a shape, humanoid but wrong, its edges blurring as if it couldn’t quite hold itself together. It was there for a second, then gone, leaving only the faintest shimmer in the air, like heat rising off asphalt. Harlow’s breath came faster. She knew what she was seeing. Knew, and didn’t want to, because knowing meant Morris hadn’t been drunk when he’d sworn he saw shadows moving in the evidence locker. It meant the things he’d whispered in the hospital, his voice raw with terror, weren’t the ravings of a dying man. It meant she’d been wrong for three years. “Detective!” Whitaker’s hand closed around her arm, yanking her back. “What the hell are you doing?” She shook him off, her mind racing. The compass. The symbols. The way Mercer’s body looked like it had been hollowed out from the inside. This wasn’t an overdose. This was a transaction gone wrong. A deal made in a place that wasn’t supposed to exist. A market that moved every full moon. Her watch beeped—midnight. She turned back to the body, her gaze snagging on the paper bag. The compass had stilled, its needle now pointing at Mercer’s chest. At the blackened stain on his shirt. Harlow knelt again, this time ripping open the dead man’s collar. Beneath it, half-hidden by the fabric, was a small bone token strung on a length of frayed twine. She recognized it instantly—the same smooth, yellowed bone she’d seen in Morris’s evidence photos. The same token that had been logged into the property room and vanished the next day. Her fingers trembled as she reached for it. “Quinn, don’t—” She touched the bone. The world tilted. For a second, the station wasn’t abandoned. The walls pulsed with sickly green light, the air thick with the stench of burning herbs and something sweeter, something rotten underneath. The platform teemed with figures—some human, some not—bartering in hushed, guttural tongues. A woman with too many fingers counted out silver coins into a scale balanced on a stall of blackened wood. A man with eyes like polished river stones held up a jar of writhing shadows. And in the center of it all, a figure in a long coat, its face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat, turned toward her. Harlow gasped, jerking her hand back. The vision snapped like a rubber band, leaving her gasping on the cold concrete. The station was empty again. Silent. Whitaker was staring at her like she’d lost her mind. She had. Or she was about to. Because she knew, now, what Morris had been investigating before he died. And she knew she was the only one who could finish it. She stood on shaky legs, tucking the bone token into her pocket before Whitaker could see. “Call it in,” she said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline coursing through her. “Suspected drug-related death. But keep the team out of the tunnel.” Whitaker opened his mouth to argue, but she was already walking away, her mind racing faster than her steps. She needed to find Eva Kowalski. The red-haired researcher had been Morris’s “occult consultant” before his death—before Harlow had dismissed her as a crank, another Oxford grad chasing ghosts for tenure points. She was wrong about a lot of things, it seemed. The compass in the evidence bag pulsed again, its needle now pointing toward the station’s exit. Toward the street. Toward her. Harlow adjusted her watch, the leather strap a familiar comfort against her wrist. The hunt was on. And this time, she wasn’t letting go.