If you’ve played Halo Infinite, then you know of Laurette Agryna. The Spartan was a critical part of the multiplayer component’s ongoing story, and a voice in your ear during white-knuckle Big Team Battle matches, no matter how annoying it was to hear over and over again that, yes, we know, the enemy team has captured our flag and we’ve gotta intercept them. Now Agryna gets her own origin story in the short story “London Calling,” from the just-published anthology Halo: Waypoint Chronicles.
“London Calling” (yes, like The Clash‘s 1979 album) takes place in London during the Battle of Earth, the Covenant invasion that began during Halo 2 and continued into Halo 3. In the short story, Agryna is not yet a Spartan. While trying to hide from invading forces, she finds herself cornered by a Brute and an Elite. (If you’re familiar with the late-game events of Halo 2, you probably have a sense of how exactly that conflict plays out.)
Halo: Waypoint Chronicles is written by Jeff Easterling, a senior franchise lead at Halo Studios, and Alexander Wakeford, a franchise writer at Halo Studios (whom longtime Halo fans might recognize as “Haruspis,” formerly of the series’ community team). The anthology includes more than 30 stories, approximately two dozen of which were previously published online. And the audiobook version includes narration from true Halo royalty, including Jen Taylor (who voices Cortana) and Jeff Steitzer (the voice behind “double kill,” “triple kill,” and every other medal you earned in multiplayer).
Now, read — or listen! — to an exclusive excerpt from “London Calling.”
Excerpt from
The lift reached the ground floor, and the door slid open to an empty lobby. Many of the windows were shattered and large sections of the marble floor blasted apart, but there at least didn’t appear to be any bodies. Agryna took a running jump and leaped over shards of glass littering the floor, finally escaping through a tall window frame.
As soon as she set foot on the street, Agryna was forced to scramble for cover behind a nearby rubbish tip. Searchlights flared from above as the bulbous purple form of a Phantom dropship slowly passed overhead, illuminating the hulking forms of two Brutes patrolling the area perhaps fifty meters away. She couldn’t help but notice something odd about them. They were dragging someone by the legs who was shouting and flailing, but the figure clearly wasn’t human.
The screech of a Banshee attack flyer startled Agryna before she could get a closer look, the whine of its engines sounding shrill as it followed the Phantom. Agryna used the sound as her opportunity to break into a sprint down Millbank and toward the Palace of Westminster, which looked out over the River Thames.
Moving through the streets proved straightforward enough thanks to the sheer number of wrecked and abandoned vehicles providing plenty of cover. Many of the civilians had already fled either to the nearest spaceport or to one of the city’s many subterranean fallout shelters. Agryna spotted movement from the windows of several other office buildings on the left side of the road—UNSC marksmen setting up positions as the Phantoms were circling back around for another patrol pass.
Agryna knelt by a taxi’s open rear passenger door, staying low to get a better look and catch her breath. One of the Phantoms appeared to be diverting from its patrol route, seemingly having detected the presence of human forces as well.
“Fire!” a voice bellowed from inside the office building, followed by a volley of four rockets that sped toward the Phantom, trailing dark plumes in their wake. All four hit their mark, sending the Phantom careening to the ground.
Agryna scrambled to her feet and sprinted as fast as she could, the dropship smashing into the road upside down and continuing to skid toward her position, violently displacing the vehicles on the road like they were toys.
She didn’t have time to check whether any Covenant forces had spotted her, nor if any UNSC troops had seen a civilian in the danger zone and were waving her over to take shelter with them. The upturned Phantom slid to a halt about thirty meters behind her, the craft exploding with a high-pitched shriek, scattering huge chunks of alloy in all directions.
As Agryna rounded the corner onto Bridge Street, she dared to turn around to see the debris and raised the middle finger of both hands in a profane gesture at the wreckage as she made out three Brutes and half a dozen Jackals and Grunts crawling on the ground, engulfed in purple-blue flames.
That one’s from my father, you ugly tossers!
At last, she could see it. Westminster Bridge was just about a hundred meters away. . .and a whole pack of Brutes was patrolling the area, with some of them appearing to be coming her way to investigate the wrecked Phantom. Short of a firefight or some other kind of notable distraction, there was no way in hell she was making it past them.
Agryna went over a chest-high wall and found herself in a small garden enclosure, where she could take cover by a small fountain. She tried to calm her mind, but the adrenaline was still pumping through her, heart hammering in her chest. She focused on taking a deep breath, holding it for a second, then quietly exhaling, repeating the process as she put her head between her knees. Instinctually, she patted her rucksack just to reaffirm that it still was on her back, the package safely inside. Agryna felt temptation creeping in, a silent urge to unzip the backpack and look inside, to see what had been deemed such an important asset—not just by ONI, but her own father had been willing to take the courier job for it. As far as she knew, he’d lived off the grid to get away from ONI.
Damn it, Dad, she thought as her mind conjured the image of his lifeless body.
A sudden nearby rustling sound interrupted her thoughts, prompting her to look up from the ground, and she found herself staring into the eyes of an Elite.
Panic began to rise within her chest as the saurian, blue-armored creature raised a leathery looking hand.
Oh, shit. . .
This was it. She stood absolutely no chance against a creature this powerful in such close quarters. And even if she managed to get away from the Elite, she would be back contending with the nearby pack of Brutes—and she really didn’t fancy her chances outrunning them.
A thousand thoughts thundered through her mind—conflicting instincts of fight or flight, thoughts of her father, her failure of this mission . . .
But no lethal blow came.
She saw instead within the Elite’s amber eyes her own fear and panic reflected.
Its hand curled, and its four mandibles tightened shut, raising one quivering finger to its mouth in a human shushing gesture.
Time seemed to slow to a halt, and Agryna thought that there was no way this day could possibly get any more surreal. The Covenant was invading Earth, her father had been killed, a high-priority ONI mission somehow rested entirely on her . . . and now it seemed the aliens were, what? Turning against each other?
The moment she allowed herself to let go of a small percentage of the tension she felt, the massive furry form of a Brute loomed over the other side of the wall. Agryna instinctively tried to appear as small as possible, holding her breath and hoping that the creature would move on, and it appeared that the Elite had the exact same idea.
The nine-foot-tall beast sniffed the air, snarling and growling as it turned . . . until its dead gray eyes locked onto Agryna.
Before she could move, it charged through the thin stone wall, scattering debris in all directions and displacing the Elite from his hiding spot with a cry of panic. The Brute stared at Agryna, then turned to the Elite, and its large mouth—stained with purple blood—curled in what looked like a sinister grin.
It grabbed the Elite by the back of the neck, yanking the alien upward with immense strength, and spoke words that Agryna couldn’t understand, but its tone sounded triumphant. She imagined it was likely something along the lines of “Found you!”
Before the Elite could recover or respond, the Brute began to tear into the alien with its claws. The sound the Elite made as it was torn apart limb from limb was unlike anything Agryna had ever heard, and in that moment she found that she actually felt some degree of pity for it.
But the Elite had given her the distraction she needed to get out of cover and make for the bridge.
She kept to the right side of the road, which offered at least some rudimentary protection thanks to benches and rows of raised stone planters. The Elite had ceased its death cries now, and Agryna took that to indicate it was only a matter of time before the Brute would turn its attention to hunting the human it had spotted hiding with the Elite—and that wasn’t accounting for any Covenant squads possibly set up on the bridge itself.
Sure enough, as she approached a vacant Scorpion tank, its armor scorched from a fight clearly lost earlier that day, keeping as low as she possibly could, Agryna spotted yet another group of Brutes. The ground was strewn with debris and her foot caught on the broken remnants of a car door torn from an Überchassis, sending her stumbling forward. Her backpack caught on one of the Scorpion’s colossal treads, breaking a strap and falling to the ground.
After scrambling to recover the backpack and cradling it to her chest, Agryna froze as she heard thudding footsteps getting closer.
Change of plan. She grimaced, quickly realizing there was simply no way of making it across the bridge, and knowing what would happen if she got caught. She would have to find another way. To make matters worse, the cover of night was slowly lifting, soon leaving her even more exposed.
Backing up, she kept her eyes locked on the silhouetted figures of six Brutes. She wasn’t sure whether the lumbering beasts had a kind of sixth sense for being watched or if her backtracking footsteps displaced yet something else on the ground, but the creatures spun on their heels and immediately caught sight of her.
Their nostrils flared, and fear gripped her heart like a vise. One of them made a sharp barking sound that earned deep guttural growls from its fellows.
Driven by pure instinct, Agryna turned to run, despite knowing that the monster wanted her to run.
She barely made it five feet before she was stopped in her tracks.
Something hit the ground almost immediately in front of her. Agryna raised her arms to protect her face as dust and granite was kicked up, the impact knocking her hard on her back. It felt like her eardrums had burst from a sonic blast and her vision swam as she fought to stay conscious. As her vision cleared and the object preventing her from fleeing the Brutes took a more defined shape, her heart skipped a beat.
A UNSC drop pod had landed right in her path.
Though her hearing was muffled, she heard a metallic clang as the pod’s hatch detached, and out strode a figure of legend.
A Spartan.
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Halo: Waypoint Chronicles is out now wherever you pick up your books.
Cover image: TM & © Microsoft 2026. All Rights Reserved. Xbox, Halo, and Halo Studios are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
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