Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8TKBSJ9AETT61W2CQE3H9N

The damp Camden air clung to Detective Harlow Quinn’s trench coat as she ducked under the police tape strung across a rusted service door. The entrance was tucked between a kebab shop and a record store, all neon and noise, but the alley behind was a pocket of silence. Her worn leather watch felt tight on her wrist as she checked the time: 23:47. The call had come in as a possible homicide, location unusual. An abandoned Tube station. Her sharp jaw tightened. She descended a crumbling staircase, the concrete steps slick with condensation. The air grew colder, carrying a metallic tang and something else—ozone, like after a lightning strike. At the bottom, the beam of her flashlight cut through a vast, echoing darkness. This wasn't just a disused station; it was a cavern. Arching Victorian brickwork formed a vaulted ceiling lost in shadow. But along the old platform, a bizarre tableau was illuminated by the stark white of forensic lights. Stalls. Dozens of them, fashioned from scrap wood and moth-eaten velvet, were arrayed in a haphazard bazaar. They were empty now, save for a few overturned tables and scattered, peculiar items: vials of iridescent liquid, bundles of feathers that looked too large for any bird, books bound in what appeared to be scaled hide. The scene was silent except for the low murmur of the forensics team and the drip of water from the tunnel mouth. “Quinn.” Detective Sergeant Liam Carter emerged from behind a stall hung with tarnished bells. He was a broad man, ten years her junior, with a perpetually harried expression. “Hell of a place. Squatters’ market, looks like. Niche stuff. Occult, satanic, you know the drill.” “The drill,” Quinn repeated, her voice flat. Her eyes were already cataloguing. Military precision kept her movements economical as she stepped onto the platform. The floor was gritty with ancient dust and newer footprints. “Where’s the victim?” Carter led her to the far end, near the mouth of the dark tunnel where trains once ran. A body lay supine, covered by a sheet. Carter pulled it back. The man was in his sixties, gaunt, with skin the colour of old parchment. He wore a tailored waistcoat of an outdated cut over a simple linen shirt. His throat had been cut—a single, deep, precise incision. But Quinn’s gaze snapped to his hands. They were stained a deep, unnatural blue, as if he’d been handling ink, and his fingertips were calloused not with labour, but with fine, precise work. A craftsman’s hands. On a cord around his neck hung a small, carved token—a piece of yellowed bone, etched with a labyrinthine pattern. “We’re thinking a deal went bad,” Carter offered, nodding at the stalls. “This is clearly an illegal market. He was probably the organiser. Rival maybe thought he was holding out. Classic territorial dispute.” Quinn didn’t answer. She crouched, her knees popping. She ignored the wound for a moment, studying the area around the body. No spatter pattern on the dusty floor matched the arterial spray from a carotid cut. The blood had pooled neatly beneath him, too contained. As if he’d already been on the ground when his throat was opened. She looked at his face. His eyes were open, a pale, milky blue. No fear there. Surprise, maybe. “Was anything taken?” she asked. Carter shrugged. “Hard to say. Place is full of junk. Forensics is bagging everything. But there’s this.” He held up an evidence bag. Inside was a small, empty wooden box lined with faded velvet. A perfect rectangle of clean space sat in the centre of the dust on a table near the body. “Looks like something was displayed here. Probably what the killer wanted.” “Any idea what?” “Some kind of navigational instrument,” a new voice said, soft and hesitant. Quinn stood and turned. A young woman with a freckled complexion and a head of riotous red curls stood a few feet away, clutching a worn leather satchel to her chest. She pushed her round glasses up her nose with a finger. Eva Kowalski. Quinn had been briefed; the museum had sent a research assistant from their restricted archives as a consultant due to the “unusual artefacts” reported. Quinn had filed it under bureaucratic nonsense. “And you are?” Quinn asked, though she knew. “Eva Kowalski. From the British Museum.” Eva’s green eyes were wide behind her lenses, taking in the market with a mixture of dread and fascination. She tucked a curl behind her left ear, a nervous, quick gesture. “A navigational instrument,” Quinn prompted, her tone leaving no room for irrelevant detail. Eva approached, careful not to touch anything. She pointed to the empty space in the box. “The dimensions suggest a small compass. But not a standard one.” She gestured to the stall itself. The wood was carved with faint, intricate symbols. Quinn had dismissed them as graffiti or artistic flourish. Now she looked closer. They matched the style of the sigil on the bone token around the dead man’s neck. “These are protective sigils,” Eva said, her voice gaining a thread of academic confidence. “Very old. And look here.” She indicated the edge of the velvet lining in the box. A faint, greenish stain. “Verdigris. From brass. So a brass compass, stored here, etched with similar sigils for protection. It wasn’t just a tool. It was a significant artefact.” “A fancy compass,” Carter said, sighing. “So our victim was a collector of weird antiques. Killer stole his prized possession. Motive still stands.” Quinn walked away from them, her flashlight beam sweeping the ground. The evidence didn’t add up. A territorial dispute in a black market would be messy, violent, with signs of a struggle. This was clean. Surgical. The lack of spatter… it was as if the killing was almost ceremonial. And the victim’s hands… She stopped near a puddle of stagnant water by the tunnel mouth. Next to it, almost invisible against the dark brick, was a smudge. She crouched again. Not a smudge. A footprint. But it wasn’t made by mud or dust. It seemed etched into the brick itself, a slight depression, and within its outline, the brick was bleached pale, as if all colour had been sucked out. It was cold to the touch, colder than the surrounding stone. A supernatural chill seeped through her glove. “Carter,” she called. “Over here.” He came over, Eva trailing behind. “What is it?” “A print.” He shone his light. “I don’t see anything.” “Look at the brick. The colour. The temperature.” Carter touched it. “It’s damp. It’s a old station, Quinn. Everything’s weird down here.” Eva, however, had gone very still. She was staring at the print, then at the tunnel mouth, then back at the empty display box. “It points,” she whispered. “What?” Quinn snapped. “The compass. If it was a Veil Compass… they don’t point north.” Eva’s voice was barely audible. “They point toward the nearest supernatural rift or portal. A breach between worlds. That’s what the sigils are for—protection from the energies.” Quinn’s mind, a machine built on procedure and evidence, recoiled. Supernatural rift. The words were absurd. But they landed on a cold, hard place inside her—the unresolved file on DS Morris. Morris, who had been found in a similar forgotten place, his body surrounded by inexplicable thermal anomalies and electromagnetic distortions the report had ultimately labelled as faulty equipment. Unexplained circumstances. She looked at the bleached footprint. She looked at the victim’s blue-stained hands. A craftsman. A Shade artisan, her mind supplied, though she didn’t know where the term came from. The creator of the compass. The killer hadn’t been after a valuable collectible. They had been after a key. A key to find something. And they had taken it from the one man who could make or perhaps control it. This wasn’t a simple murder-robbery. It was an acquisition. Professional, cold, and connected to things her police training had no name for. Carter was talking, reiterating his theory about rival stallholders. Eva was watching Quinn, a silent question in her green eyes. Quinn stood, brushing dust from her trousers. “Bag the box, the token, and photograph this area with spectral imaging,” she said, her voice leaving no room for argument. “I want a full work-up on the residue on the victim’s hands. And pull any cold cases with similar… environmental disturbances.” “Quinn, that’s a hell of a stretch,” Carter said. “Maybe,” she said, her gaze fixed on the dark tunnel. The compass was gone. Its needle, wherever it was now, would be pointing somewhere. And for the first time since Morris died, Harlow Quinn felt a dreadful, certain clarity. The evidence didn’t add up because she’d been trying to fit it into the wrong world. A deeper, darker market was operating here, and she had just seen the first real clue. She checked her watch again, a habit. Time was moving. But now, she suspected, it might not be the only thing.