Reading police station attack

The Reading police station attack is a deliberately staged Grafter assault that exposes the danger of an apparently isolated public incident and forces the Checquy into an urgent, highly visible response. A message from Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen frames the outbreak as a demonstration of capability, while Myfanwy identifies Reading before she receives the official details and directs the response toward a sealed police station in the town center.

Causes and Warning

The immediate warning arrives as a fax addressed to Rook Thomas. In ornate copperplate, Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen claims responsibility for unleashing a small horror in Reading to demonstrate Grafter capabilities. He warns that John Perry’s home may soon be destroyed if the Checquy does not act quickly, and says he looks forward to seeing Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen on Tuesday. The message therefore links the outbreak to a larger confrontation: the attack is not presented as an unexplained local emergency, but as a threat with an announced political purpose and a named future encounter.

The fax reaches Myfanwy while staff are still working. Its arrival coincides with flickering lights, alarm chimes, and a frantic call to Ingrid’s desk. Ingrid learns that an incident is underway, but before she can finish telling Myfanwy where, Myfanwy supplies the answer: Reading. Ingrid’s surprise confirms that Myfanwy has anticipated the location from the circumstances available to her. That moment sharpens the contrast between a remote warning and an emergency already in motion: the message predicts danger, while the Checquy’s alert system reports that it has begun.

The Assault at the Station

The attack takes place in a police station in the middle of Reading. Its position makes discretion difficult, but the building’s staff have sealed it off. The initial reports describe a nondescript man entering the station, killing the person closest to him, and locking the door behind him. When a constable confronts him, the attacker kills him as well. Police then gather weapons and attempt to stop the assailant with gunfire and Tasers.

The weapons do not halt him. According to the reports, bullets strike his body without incapacitating him. He then produces fleshy extensions from his arms that impale people in the room and draw them toward him. The account says that his skin spreads over those he has captured, incorporating them into his body as he grows larger and more uneven in shape. The station thus becomes the site of an escalating transformation: the attacker does not merely resist arrest but absorbs his victims, making the danger increase as the assault continues.

The attack’s public setting magnifies its consequences. Gunfire from inside the station, screams, and blood visible on the windows drive many people away from the surrounding streets on a Saturday afternoon. The unusual violence makes the incident difficult to conceal through ordinary means, even before the response teams arrive. The Checquy must therefore confront both the immediate threat and the risk that witnesses and media will expose the event.

Emergency Response

The Checquy mobilizes immediately. The Reading Situation Response Team reaches the area, isolates it, guides remaining onlookers away, and deters the media. The police have already sealed the station, and portable operation centers are expected to be ready by the time Myfanwy and her party arrive. These measures establish a layered response: the police contain the building, local Checquy personnel control the surrounding scene, and additional forces move toward the site.

Ingrid informs Myfanwy that the Barghests are mobilizing and will rendezvous with them at the station. She assigns Myfanwy’s two bodyguards to provide on-site security for the Rook, then collects her coat and a laptop. The communications employee who delivered the fax is also ordered to accompany the party, remain under Myfanwy’s supervision, and say nothing about what he heard in the room. Myfanwy’s instructions turn the emergency into an operation with controlled access to information as well as a physical destination.

Pawn Cyrus West offers to retain command of the operation, explaining that the Barghests were called automatically and that the alert has reached a color-crisis level. Pawn Alan Summerhill identifies the level as chartreuse. The brief exchange adds a procedural detail to the larger crisis: the Checquy’s response is governed by a graded warning system, and the Barghests’ mobilization follows from that system rather than from a separate decision made at the scene.

Significance and Unresolved Threat

The attack joins an individual assault to a direct Grafter warning. Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen’s fax supplies an explicit claim of responsibility and describes the event as a demonstration, while the threat to John Perry’s home and the reference to Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen extend the stakes beyond the police station. The attack’s purpose, as stated in the message, is intimidation through proof of capability; its immediate effect is to compel a rapid Checquy deployment in a populated town.

At the point covered by these events, the assailant has not been reported contained, and the Checquy response is still moving into place. The episode ends on mobilization rather than resolution: Reading has been isolated, the Barghests are on their way, and Myfanwy is heading to the site with Ingrid and a security detail. The station attack consequently functions both as a local emergency and as the opening move in a broader confrontation whose promised meeting with Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen remains ahead.