The Dark Ice Chronicles - The Magi

Chapter 24 - Brainwashing Our Children To Be Mean

Right after school, Evan gets a phone call from Elena, and as soon as she’s done, she turns to me and says, “Michelle’s drivin’ us to San Jose. Elena wants us all to meet her at Severide headquarters at four-thirty.”

“Does it have anything to do with the new kid in class?” I ask.

“Must be,” Evan says as she sends out a blanket text to everyone else. “It must be really bad, too, if we’re going to HQ.”

“You think were gonna finally meet that North guy everyone’s been talkin’ about?”

“I kinda hope so,” Evan says.

Ten minutes later, Michelle drives up to the parking lot and picks us all up. In a strange switch-up of our usual seating arrangement, Harris sits up front, propping his foot on top of his backpack. Evan, meanwhile, takes the hump between Kevin and me. I’m actually grateful for this change, because now Evan and I get to sit next to each other. We do, however, resist the urge to do anything more than holding hands in the PDA department. We’ve agreed that intense make-out sessions are best left for when we’re by ourselves.

We reach Severide headquarters - Michelle has programmed the address into her phone, and has been having Harris call out the directions - with five minutes to spare. After finding a parking space, we head to the door, and are let in by none other than Ben Williams. Ben then escorts us to the elevator, and takes us all the way up to the top floor.

On the top floor, there’s nothing but a few chairs facing a secretary’s desk. The secretary looks up at us, then says, “They’re inside, waiting for you.” She presses a button, and a buzzer sounds off as a door opens behind her head.

That’s it. The woman is surprisingly unfazed by the fact that we’re all teenagers. Which makes me wonder, are we the first kids Elena has gotten to do stuff for this company?

“Ah, children,” Elena says as we enter the room. “Thank you for coming. Allow me to present the man in charge of our little operation - North.”

A tall, portly older man with gray hair and beard steps out from behind his old-fashioned wooden desk. He comes up to Evan first, offering his hand, and says in a slight Russian accent not unlike Ms. Y’s, “Pleased to meet you. I’m Nicholas Severide.”

Evan shakes his hand, then he moves on to me. “That doesn’t really sound like a Russian name,” I say. “Severide, I mean.”

“I Anglicized it when I came to this country,” says North - or Severide, or whatever I’m supposed to call him. “I was born Nikolai Severov. That is the reason for my code name, actually. The Russian for ‘north’ is ‘severu.’”

Severide moves on and says hello to everyone else, then gets down to business. “Now, as I am sure some of you are aware, the youngest son of Marten Drake has moved to Spellman and is now enrolled at Independence High school. I understand you two” - he points to Evan and me, one after the other - “now share a class with the boy who calls himself Henry Morgan.”

He pauses, and I raise my hand like I’m in class. “Yes, Mr. Cross?”

“Okay,” I say, clapping my hands. “Now, the other day, my dad talked to me about how we’re supposedly workin’ with Marten Drake now. Is that true, or was he just makin’ things up?”

“We are working with Marten Drake, yes,” Severide says. “However, his eldest son, Oscar, is continuing to stir up trouble for us. He escaped from prison the day after New Year’s, and soon after he went underground again. We have since traced him to an abandoned firehouse in the northern part of Spellman, along with young Henry.”