Ch. 3: Welcome to the Archive Pt. 1

An alarm clock went off waking the sleeping occupant of the bed next to it. Elsa's hand reached out and shut the alarm off before rolling over and staring at the ceiling. Last night had been somewhat rough with all the questions that had been swirling around in her head. Her dreams had been full with images of what she had seen at the department store and Daniel. His answers were frustrating at best yesterday and she wanted nothing more than to search Arendelle until she found him and make him talk. She had seen things, dammit! She was entitled, no matter what he thought, to know at least a bit of the truth. All of this was on Elsa's mind as she and Anna sat in silence at the table eating breakfast.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Anna asked, breaking the silence.

"Just… thinking about Daniel. The night I met him he didn't seem to care about what he told me but the second time when we confronted him he was as tight as a clam. I can't figure him out and it is vexing me."

"Hey, just give it some time. We can come back to it later because there is no way I'm done with him either and maybe we can finally get an answer of two. Sometimes all we need to do is give things some time and then when we return we find what we're looking for."

Elsa smiled lightly and finished the last of her eggs. She had put away her dishes and was walking past the front door to the bathroom to brush her teeth when a pair of envelopes was slipped underneath. She stopped to pick them up and felt an immediate tingling sensation when she touched them. The envelopes were identical, she noted, and one was addressed to her and the other to Anna. On the back was a stamp emblem of a phoenix. Curious.

"Anna, we got some mail."

"Mail? It's still morning, the postman doesn't come until the afternoon."

"I know, these letters addressed to us were just slipped under the door," she replied as she gave Anna hers.

Elsa opened her envelope and pulled out the paper that was inside. Actually, it wasn't paper, she thought, it more looked like parchment. It was blank but a second after it had left the envelope it glowed a brightly and gold letters wrote themselves onto the parchment. It read like this:

Elsa Callahan,

You have been selected to interview for a position at the Phoenix Division.

Come this afternoon at one o'clock sharp to the address listed at the bottom.

Wonders beyond your wildest dreams await you should you choose to accept.

Be sure to have this letter with you or you will not be admitted.

There was no signature. In its place was another phoenix emblem like the one on the back of the envelope. Elsa looked at the envelope next. It was plain white but bore no return address or even any postage stamps. It was as if they appeared at their place by… magic.

"Elsa… what does your letter say?" asked Anna as she looked up from her letter, one identical to hers Elsa noticed.

"It says that I've been picked to interview for a position at some place called the Phoenix Division, whatever that is."

"I got the exact same letter!"

"Really? How could we both get letters about a job at the same place?"

"I don't know, but we have."

Elsa looked back down at her letter and the address it had listed. It was somewhere in the warehouse district if her memory was right.

"So… are we going or not?" asked the redhead.


Curiosity killed the cat. This was no exception. After what they had both seen, the letters piqued the interest of both sisters. There was no way either of them were going to let this go unexplored. If Daniel would not give them answers, perhaps his would if it was what they were hoping it was. So it was a few minutes before one in the afternoon that they were pulling up outside an old brick warehouse in Arendelle's warehouse district in Elsa's blue Subaru Legacy.

"This is the place? Are you sure?"

"Anna, it's the address on the letter. You can check yours if you want."

Elsa had to admit that she too was unimpressed. She wasn't sure what she was expecting but it was not an old building standing alone in the middle of a relatively abandoned area of the city. She was even starting to wonder if they should have come at all.

"At least there are people here," Anna said and pointed to three cars that were parked outside the warehouse.

One of the vehicles was a rust red original Volkswagen Beetle, another was a light green 1978 Pontiac Thunderbird and the last was a ruby red Ford Firebird.

Elsa and Anna got out the car and approached the door nestled to the side of the building. The sound of another vehicle pulling up behind them drew their attention and they saw Kristoff's old Toyota Hilux come rumbling up. The muscular man got out and looked at the sisters before speaking.

"So, I'm assuming that you also got letters earlier today asking you to come here to interview for a job?"

"That's right. Did yours also have the phoenix stamp on it?" questioned the younger sibling.

"It did."

"Just to make sure we've got this right, all three of us got a letter today from a place called the Phoenix Division saying we had been selected for some sort of a job interview, right?" the elder sibling asked.

"Yeah, that's basically correct," the other two agreed.

"One more question though, why?"

"Well I believe I can help answer that, Miss Callahan."

The trio turned around so fast they could have seen the backs of their own heads. Standing behind them, having seemingly appeared from nowhere, was a middle aged man with salt and pepper hair and goatee. He was of average height, had put on a few extra pounds in his advancing age but still looked like he could really move if he had to.

"Apologies for being late, I had something I needed to take care of."

"Who are you?"

"I am Alec Falken and you are Elsa Callahan, Anna Callahan and Kristoff Bjorgman, am I right?"

"How do you know our names?" asked Kristoff.

"Well, Mr. Bjorgman, you all received letters today asking you to come for job interviews right? Well I'm the person in charge here so of course I'm going to know your names. Now come with me, please, I'll show you around."

"Around what? What are we even doing here?" Elsa asked, desperately wanting some answers.

"Don't worry, Miss Callahan, I'll explain everything inside. Come on now."

Alec walked past them all and took a small remote out of one of his pockets which he used to open the door. Elsa, Anna and Kristoff didn't move from where they were standing.

"Well come on, we haven't got all day," he said and walked further into the warehouse. "Everything is alright, I assure you."

The three of them followed, albeit with a fair distance between them and Alec. He was leading them down a brightly lit passageway that had a door at the end with no handle on it. Spaced every few feet along the wall were cylinders that had caution labels on them.

"Word of advice, don't touch those cylinders, they're bombs."

"Bombs?!" they all three exclaimed.

"Yes, but it's really nothing to worry too much about. We haven't had to set them off in the history of the Phoenix Division," answered Alec as he leaned in close to the box which scanned his retina before opening the door.

"I still don't understand, though, where are we?" Anna inquired as they crossed the threshold into an office that seemed to have been taken out of a steampunk novel. The chairs at the three desks were more modern but everything else followed the same steampunk motif, including the computer monitors. The largest desk, which was facing the windows which had the blinds drawn, was the only desk that had a computer. The rest of the space was filled with papers and files. The desk to the right was in front of a bookcase that held a myriad of books from steampunk to fantasy to science fiction. The third desk to the left was filled with half-finished electronic projects that had components strew about along with post-it notes and sheets of paper with details scribbled on them.

"Please, hold your questions for a bit later. First off, I'd like to introduce you to the other people you'll be working with," said Alec as he pulled a flare gun out of a drawer in the larger desk and walked out the door. "That should have gotten their attention. Your associates will be arriving here shortly. In the meantime does anyone want some cookies?"

Anna didn't need to be asked twice and swiped three cookies off the plate Alec was holding so fast you'd think it was a magic trick.

"No thanks," Elsa smiled when the plate was offered to her.

"Elsa, you need to try these," Anna urged through a mouthful. "Is there any way I can get the recipe?"

"Possibly," Alec grinned as Kristoff took one of the tasty treats.

"I'm here! I made it! Ran all the way, I hope you appreciate it!" wheezed a man as he ran through the door.

"Your timing is perfect, Andrew. Class, this is Andrew Salcedo. Andrew, these are our new colleagues, Elsa and Anna Callahan and Kristoff Bjorgman."

"Hello!" Anna chirped with a wide smile.

"Hi," Andrew grinned back as he shook everyone's hand. "As Alec said, I am Andrew, I'm the resident tech geek."

Andrew was a skinny twig of a man who gave the impression of always having boundless energy, not too unlike Anna, Elsa mused. His short dark hair was in a quiff and his brown eyes sparkled with merriment.

"Andrew, where's our other associate?" Alec asked as he helped himself to an oatmeal raisin cookie.

"Uh, I believe he's down in aisle E-287. He should be here any second now actually."

"I was right in the middle of taking inventory all the way in the E sector, this had better be good… Alec. Oh Merlin's beard, what are you doing here?" I exclaimed when I saw who else was in the office.

"We got envelopes asking us to come here, what's your excuse?" snapped Elsa as she displayed her letter.

"You know each other?" asked Andrew, his eyebrow raised.

"Let me see that," I grumbled and snatched it out of her hand. "And yes, Andrew, we know each other. She was the one I got out of the department store on the ghost bust. You sent them a letter, Alec?"

"And you blew up my job with that ball thing you had!"

"I don't send the letters, the Archive does!"

"Wait, your job got blown up?"

"But, but, but… why? Why them?"

"Yes! It was on the news, where have you been?"

"Don't ask me how the Archive makes decisions, I don't know."

"I haven't had time for the news lately."

"Alec, is there any way this is a mistake?"

"Sorry, Daniel, but if they got the envelope there's no mistake. They're agents now."

"Wait, did you say agents?" Kristoff cut in. "What's going on?"

I huffed and threw myself into my chair, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Before we answer that, there are a few things that are going to have to be explained first," Alec deadpanned as he kept his gaze on me. "First things first, magic exists."

Kristoff gave a chuckle of disbelief while Elsa and Anna glanced at each other but stayed quiet.

"No, we're serious, really. Magic is real and it's out there in the world every day. Daniel and Andrew here are wizards."

"Really?" Kristoff inquired, clearly disbelieving and not without reason. "What about you? Are you also a wizard?"

"Me? No, I'm an outsider."

"What's an outsider?" Anna spoke up.

"An outsider can refer to either someone who does not know about the world of magic or someone, like Alec, who does know but has no magic powers. It's our term for 'muggle.'" Andrew replied.

"But you and Daniel do have magic?"

"Indeed we do," I spoke up and summoned a gust of wind that carried my staff from its place across the room around the office and finally into my awaiting hand. "Because it's against our laws to directly reveal the existence of magic to outsiders, I couldn't answer any of the questions you had. However, since you've all gotten those letters you're about to step into a world that before you only watched in movies and on TV and read about in books."

"Alright, just give us a minute to swallow that…"

Elsa, who was less overwhelmed, asked the next question. "What do you do here, though? Why are we here?"

"Well, Elsa, we are the Phoenix Division. It's our job to locate objects that could ruin the world's day, collect it and bring it back here where it is locked away and kept safe from the rest of the world," I stated.

"Essentially we help to keep the existence of magic a secret," Andrew added.

"But what is this place?" Anna questioned next.

Smiles broke out on our faces, including mine.

"This way, please," asked Alec as he got up and led them to the door to the main floor.

Outside the office was a balcony with a staircase that led down to the ground floor and beyond that was a huge cavernous space many times larger than the warehouse that contained it. In fact, it seemed to stretch on forever. The space was filled with aisles upon aisles of crates and objects of all kinds from bric-a-brac to vehicles to who knew what else.

"Elsa, Anna, Kristoff… welcome to the Archive."


A/N: And there you have it, they finally know. I really hope you all enjoyed this chapter, I had a bit of a hard time writing it and am worried it might not be up to my usual standards. Remember, leave a review get a personal response. If you send me an idea for a story via PM or review and I use it, you'll get a sneak peek.

Until next time, this is Knight Writer 95 signing off. Keep on writing.