Run: 2026-02-20-01KHY8ES23QN863NBK4EZH454N

The air tasted of iron and damp concrete. Not the usual London grime, but something older, heavier. Detective Harlow Quinn adjusted the collar of her coat, the abrasive wool doing little against the chill seeping from the walls. Camden Town’s abandoned tube station wasn’t known for brisk drafts. It was known for being sealed off, forgotten. Now, it pulsed with a grim, unwelcome energy. Fluorescent lights, jury-rigged from something scavenged, buzzed overhead, illuminating a circle of chalk dust on the platform. Inside it, a man lay sprawled, limbs at awkward angles. Expensive suit, polished shoes. Looked like someone who usually frequented the Mayfair, not a ghost station. “Clean,” she observed, voice raspy from years of unfiltered cigarettes. “Too clean.” DS Davies, younger, by at least a decade, and perpetually eager, hovered beside the body. He bounced on the balls of his feet, trying to stay warm. His face, pale under the harsh light, registered concern. “Heart attack, maybe? Looks natural enough.” Quinn crouched, ignoring the protest in her knees. She ran a gloved hand along the platform’s edge, collecting grit. Her eyes swept the scene, cataloging. No signs of a struggle. No disturbed dust. Just… emptiness. “Natural doesn’t usually come with a bone token clutched in the hand, Davies.” Davies shuffled his feet. “Right. The token. Forensics are bagging it now. Bit odd, though, innit? Like something out of a film.” She picked up the bagged token with a pair of tweezers, turning it over. Carved bone, intricate swirling patterns. The kind you’d find… down here. “Odd doesn’t cover it. This isn't a random heart attack. This is someone who knew where they were going, and why.” She glanced around, noting the subtle scent of ozone. “And whoever he was meeting wasn’t offering tea and biscuits.” “We got a name, sir?” “Julian Devereux. City banker. Made a fortune on… well, something complicated involving derivatives. Wife reported him missing this morning. Said he mentioned a ‘late night meeting’. Couldn't specify where.” Davies recited the information with practiced efficiency. Quinn stood, her gaze fixed on a barely perceptible discoloration on the tunnel wall. A smear, almost invisible against the soot. She touched it with a gloved finger. It felt… cold. Not just temperature, but a bone-deep chill. “Devereux wasn’t here for a deal gone wrong, Davies. He was hunted.” “Hunted? By what, sir?” “That’s what we need to find out. Forensics. I want everything dusted. Every surface. I want to know if anyone else was down here, recent or not. And get me a list of everything Devereux was working on. Every account, every transaction. I want it all.” She adjusted her worn leather watch, a habit she’d picked up from DS Morris. Still felt wrong without its weight on her wrist. “Right away, sir.” Davies hurried off to relay her orders, his shoes echoing in the cavernous space. Quinn returned to the body. The medical examiner, a weary-looking woman named Patel, was already examining Devereux. “Anything?” Quinn asked. Patel looked up, her expression grim. “No obvious trauma. Heart gave out, like Davies said. But… there's something off. His skin. It’s… cold. Not post-mortem cold. *Frozen* cold. Like he was exposed to extreme temperatures, but there’s no indication of that here.” “And the eyes?” Patel gently closed Devereux’s eyelids. “Dilated. Unfocused. Like he saw something terrifying just before he died.” “Terrifying enough to induce cardiac arrest,” Quinn muttered. She crouched again, carefully examining the chalk circle. The lines weren’t clean, weren’t precise. They wavered, as if drawn by a shaky hand. Almost… defensively. “Look at this.” She gestured to a tiny, almost invisible scratch inside the circle. “Too small to be made by a shoe. Too deliberate to be accidental.” Patel leaned in, squinting. “Looks like… a sigil. Old. Very old.” Quinn’s jaw tightened. “Eva will know.” She pulled out her phone, scrolling through her contacts until she found Eva Kowalski. “Eva, it's Quinn. I need you down to Camden tube station. Now.” A pause. “Camden? What’s happened?” Eva’s voice was laced with a familiar anxiety. “Body. Looks… complicated. Sigils, bone tokens. I need your eyes on it.” “On my way.” Eva hung up, her urgency palpable even through the phone line. Fifteen minutes later, Eva arrived, a whirlwind of curly red hair and frantic energy. She clutched her worn leather satchel to her chest, round glasses sliding down her nose as she took in the scene. “Good Lord,” she breathed, pushing her glasses back up. “This is… intense.” “You recognize the sigil?” Quinn asked, nodding towards the almost invisible scratch. Eva knelt, carefully photographing it with her phone. “Partial. Very partial. Looks like a fragment of a warding symbol. Used to… contain something. Or someone.” Her fingers flew across her phone screen, pulling up images, cross-referencing. “Contain?” “Yeah. Ancient stuff. Pre-Roman Britain. Believed to be effective against… entities. Spirits. Things that aren’t supposed to be here.” “Entities?” Davies interjected, hovering nearby. “You mean ghosts?” Eva gave him a withering look. “Not ghosts, DS. Something… more substantial. More *hungry*. The Veil is thin in places, you know. And this station…” “The Veil?” Davies’ confusion was evident. Quinn cut him off. “Save the explanations for later, Eva. What can you tell me about the token?” Eva pointed to the bagged bone token on a nearby table. “Those are used to gain access to the Veil Market. It’s an… underground market. Sells enchanted objects, alchemical ingredients, information. Generally stuff you can't get anywhere else.” “And Devereux was a customer?” “Possibly. Or a supplier. Or both. People go to the Market for all sorts of reasons. Some seek power, some seek knowledge, some seek things best left alone.” Quinn walked to the tunnel wall, tracing the discoloration with her finger. “This feels… wrong. It’s not just the sigil, not just the token. It’s like something *leaked* into this place.” “Leaked?” Eva followed her, examining the wall. “You mean a rift? A thinning of the Veil?” She pulled a small brass compass from her satchel, its face etched with protective sigils. The needle spun wildly, then settled, pointing directly at the discoloration. “Definitely something here,” Eva said, her voice barely a whisper. "And it’s not happy." The casing had a patina of verdigris, evidence of age and countless journeys. “What does the Compass tell you?” Quinn asked, her gaze unwavering. “It's radiating interference. Strong. Like a localized energy surge. Whatever happened here wasn’t natural, Quinn. It was… intentional.” Eva’s nervous habit surfaced, her hand flying to tuck a strand of red hair behind her left ear. “Someone *opened* something they shouldn’t have.”