Grafter Agent’s Attack on Los Angeles International Airport

The Grafter Agent’s Attack on Los Angeles International Airport is the encounter that makes the renewed Grafter threat unmistakably urgent to both the Checquy and the Croatoan. A woman entering through LAX was found to have specific implants, then killed thirteen people before Croatoan Pawns subdued her. The attack exposed the limits of secrecy in a public airport and left the surviving agent inaccessible in a coma-like state, making her both a grave danger and a potential source of information.

Causes and Discovery

The Croatoan operation began with suspicion rather than a confirmed identification: Pawns followed the woman because she came from Belgium. They had not yet established the dog-based detection effort that Myfanwy asked about, so the implants were discovered only after the woman had been acquired and examined. Their specificity led Myfanwy to identify them as Grafter enhancements, connecting the airport incident to the wider danger of Grafter activity.

The encounter quickly altered the significance of the discovery. The woman did not merely appear to be an infiltrator carrying unusual modifications; she became violent at the airport. Shantay described the outbreak as apparently unprovoked, while allowing that the three albinos following the woman might have frightened her. The account leaves that possible explanation unresolved, but establishes that the violence began before the Croatoans could determine her purpose or question her.

The Attack and Its Human Cost

The woman killed thirteen people in the airport: four civilians and nine Pawns. The distinction mattered in the conversation because Myfanwy immediately asked whether civilians had been among the dead; Shantay confirmed that they had. The count shows that the incident was not a contained clash between supernatural organizations. Ordinary travelers were caught in it, alongside the Croatoan personnel attempting to stop the attacker.

Croatoan sharpshooters ultimately subdued the woman. Myfanwy noted that the Grafter subject encountered by the Checquy had proved bulletproof, but Shantay clarified that the Croatoans had not used bullets. The exchange establishes a practical contrast between the two encounters without specifying the Croatoans’ method. It also underscores the operational challenge of confronting implanted Grafter agents: familiar means of stopping an enhanced subject might not work, and the response could carry serious consequences in a public place.

Secrecy and Institutional Response

The airport location made the incident difficult to conceal. The Croatoans could hide some of its more unusual aspects, but not the fact that a deadly event had taken place there. Shantay reported that no Pawn activated powers in view of the public, indicating one limit the Croatoans managed to preserve even as the wider incident became impossible to suppress. Secrecy in this case was therefore partial: the organizations could obscure the supernatural explanation, not erase the public consequences.

The news prompted Shantay and Bishop Morales to travel to meet with Myfanwy. Shantay characterized the Grafters as a credible danger to both countries and explained that the appearance of one Grafter had already been concerning; the discovery of two in a short period made the pattern more alarming. The passage thus frames the airport attack not as an isolated security failure but as part of a developing threat shared across national boundaries. The Checquy’s Court had also been impressed by Myfanwy’s report, which Shantay said had proved timely, linking the attack to the organization’s ongoing assessment of Grafter activity.

The Survivor and the Unfinished Investigation

Although the Croatoans subdued the attacker, they did not secure an immediate interrogation. They transported her to their facility in Nevada, where she placed herself in what Shantay described as a coma-like state. Croatoan personnel had been unable to rouse her. Her survival preserves the possibility of learning why she entered the country and what her implants signified, but her condition turns that possibility into an unresolved problem rather than an immediate intelligence gain.

Myfanwy proposed cooperation, recalling that one of the Pawns had helped wake Peter Van Syoc. She offered the Checquy’s Dr. Crisp, its chief information extractor, whose palm-reading and haruspex abilities could reveal information about a living person. Shantay replied that the Croatoans also had someone skilled with the dead, and pointedly questioned whether Dr. Crisp was a suitable choice because he had killed the last person he interrogated. That exchange leaves the proposed assistance unsettled: the need for information is shared, but the means of obtaining it carry their own risks. The agent’s attack therefore ends, in the account available here, with immediate violence contained but the larger Grafter threat and the question of what the survivor knows still open.