There's a story you tell yourself when the world blows up in your face.

There's no way you could have seen it coming.

No one could have, so there was no way to stop it.

This is what lets you sleep at night. But go back in your mind to before it all happened. Replay it in your

head, except this time, maybe you'll see it. Something small, out of place. Maybe it's just a single

thread, but it's the truth. Nobody saw it coming when they arrived. An alien race known as

the Covenant. Before 2552, there was no way anything like that could ever happen on Earth.

On one of those distant planets in the outer colonies, maybe, but an attack on Earth? Couldn't happen,

until it did. It's called glassing.

Covenant warships rain plasma down on a planet until everything and everyone on the surface melts. Usually it's complete world destruction. Earth only got a taste. The prolonged orbital

bombardment destroyed East Africa, killing

millions before it ended. None of us were safe anymore. But something else happened that day, too,

or someone. You've heard the eyewitness accounts. Every skeptic has seen the footage. I was there,

and yet still to this day, it's unbelievable. A massive man

in green armor appeared seemingly out of nowhere in New Mombasa, performed superhuman

feats to single-handedly repel a global invasion and then disappeared? This was the master

chief. The unified Earth government's military body, the UNSC, eventually released a statement.

Who he is, where he came from, and that he's continuing to keep us safe.

And that was that.

But who is the master chief?

Where did he come from?

Is he continuing to keep us safe?

...