Run: 2026-02-20-01KHY87EE6X0W8SVXQ6ZZ810Y4

The air hung thick and damp, tasting of mildew and something vaguely metallic. Harlow Quinn adjusted the collar of her trench coat, the chill burrowing into her despite the layers. The abandoned Tube station pulsed with a low, rhythmic hum she couldn’t quite place—a mechanical thrum overlaid with something older, something deeper. The Veil Market. Officially, it was just another abandoned transport hub, sealed off decades ago after structural instability. Unofficially, it was a headache she’d been circling for years. The body lay slumped against a crumbling pillar, the remnants of what looked like a hurried meal scattered nearby: a half-eaten pastry dusted with something shimmering, a cracked vial labeled with indecipherable glyphs. Male, early thirties, neatly dressed in a charcoal suit that now bore a crimson stain blooming across the chest. No visible wounds, just… stillness. Too still. “Textbook poisoning,” Sergeant Davies said, already on his radio. His voice echoed in the cavernous space. “No sign of forced entry. Probably knew the victim.” Harlow knelt, circling the body slowly. Davies was good, solid. Reliable. But he saw the world in clean lines, in solvable equations. This scene… this wasn’t clean. The station itself was wrong. The Veil Market shifted, migrated with the lunar cycle. It was supposed to be deeper, tucked away beneath Bloomsbury this month, a labyrinth of interconnected tunnels. This was… Camden. Close to the surface. And it didn’t feel right. The usual chaotic energy of the Market – the frantic bartering, the whispers of forbidden secrets – was absent, replaced by this unsettling quiet. She ran a gloved hand along the rough concrete. No scuff marks, no signs of a struggle. The victim hadn’t fought. He'd simply… collapsed. “Anything on ID?” she asked, her voice echoing strangely. “Driver’s license, Quinn. Arthur Finch. Accountant. Nothing remarkable.” Davies pointed to a small, worn leather satchel lying near the body. “Wallet’s still here, phone too. Doesn’t look like robbery was the motive.” Harlow ignored him, her attention fixed on Finch's hand. He clutched a small object, its brass casing cold under her fingers. A compass. But not just any compass. The verdigris patina, the intricate protective sigils etched around the face… this was a Veil Compass. A rare and expensive trinket she’d only encountered in whispers within the underbelly of London's supernatural dealings. “Where did you say this was found?” she asked, deliberately keeping her tone neutral. “Right here, love. By the pillar. Pretty straightforward, wouldn’t you say?” Davies frowned, clearly exasperated by her prolonged scrutiny. Harlow ignored him again. The needle of the compass spun wildly, erratically. It shouldn't be doing that. A Veil Compass pointed towards the nearest rift, the nearest tear in the veil between worlds. It was a tool for navigators, for those who dealt in the unseen. But it was usually steady, purposeful. This was just… frantic. She glanced around the station. The tunnels, while crumbling, were structurally sound. There was no immediate indication of a rift. Unless… She rose, her gaze sweeping the far end of the station, where a section of the wall was partially obscured by debris. A faint shimmer distorted the air, barely perceptible. Heat rose from it, a subtle disturbance in the already oppressive humidity. “There’s a leak,” she stated, her voice low. “A minor one, but a leak nonetheless.” Davies squinted at the area she indicated. "A leak? What are you talking about, Quinn?" "Supernatural energy. A rift. Small, unstable, but present." She knelt again, examining the ground around the body. This time, she noticed something she'd missed before. Tiny, shimmering particles clinging to Finch’s suit, almost invisible unless viewed at a certain angle. "This isn't poisoning," she said, slowly. "It's… overload." Davies snorted. “Overload? With what? Fairy dust?” "He was tracking a rift. This compass confirms it. He got too close. Something… pushed back.” She pointed to the crumbs of the pastry. "The shimmering dust on the pastry… it was a stabilizing agent. Used to bolster the human body against exposure to raw supernatural energy. He was trying to protect himself, but it wasn’t enough." Davies shook his head. "I still don’t see it. The symptoms don't match. No convulsions, no hallucinations..." Harlow’s eyes narrowed. She remembered a case three years ago, DS Morris. The official verdict had been a heart attack, but she'd seen the flicker of something unnatural in his eyes just before he collapsed. Something she hadn’t been able to understand then. She focused again on Finch’s hand, still clutching the compass. The needle continued to spin, now slowing, seeming to converge on a single point. Not the shimmer in the wall. Something else. Something… closer. Then she noticed it. A tiny fracture, almost invisible to the naked eye, spiderwebbing across the lens of the compass. A hairline crack, radiating outwards from the center. "He wasn't tracking *away* from a rift, Davies," she murmured, mostly to herself. "He was tracking *into* one. And it wasn't in the wall. It was… inside him.” Suddenly, the hum intensified, vibrating in her bones. Harlow felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck, a familiar warning sign she’d learned to recognize after years spent skirting the edges of the unseen. “Seal this area,” she ordered Davies. “No one in or out. I want every inch of this station scanned. We're looking for residual energy signatures. And Davies…” He looked at her, his expression skeptical yet wary. “Forget the poisoning theory. This isn't a simple case. This is… something else entirely.” Her gaze drifted to the fracture in the compass’s lens. It pulsed faintly now, mirroring the subtle shimmer in the air, growing. Something was shifting. Becoming clearer. Something that wasn’t meant to be seen. A voice. A whisper, seemingly from everywhere and nowhere. It brushed against her mind, cool and insidious. *He sought knowledge... and knowledge demands a price.* Harlow felt a cold dread grip her heart. She knew that voice. Or rather, she sensed its echo, a faint resonance of the same presence she’d encountered three years ago, the same presence that had stolen DS Morris from her. "There's a connection," she muttered, her voice barely audible above the increasing hum. "A pattern. I need to find Evie." She reached for her worn leather watch, its ticking a sharp counterpoint to the growing dissonance in the air. It was time to call in a specialist. Time to bring in someone who understood the language of shadows. Because whatever had killed Arthur Finch, it was far older, far more dangerous, than anything she'd faced before.