Hours later with Tommy by her side, Angela followed her parents, Tommy’s mother and his uncle into the visitor’s housing Mrs. Carson had set up for the two families to use while they were here for the ceremony.

Once inside Tommy quickly pulled Angela to the couch in the living room area, “Can I see it now? Please can I see it?”

Knowing what her best friend was asking about, Angela opened the small purse she had been carrying and pulled out a white plastic card with a powder blue border that Tommy quickly snatched out of her hand.

“Way Cool!” The boy’s excitement showing in the wide smile as he read the card, “Oh my god it’s a military mutant card!”

“A military ID?” Harry looked over at Angela’s parents questionably, “I didn’t know either of you were military?”

“We’re not,” Angela’s mother explained, “although we have a lot of contracts with the Naval Research Laboratory and the Department of Defense. So I spoke with some of our contacts and they agreed that it would be best that Angela was issued a military mutant ID.”

“That’s cool.” Tommy’s smile suddenly disappeared, “Oh shit!”

“Tommy, language!” his mother quickly scolded.

“Um sorry mom,” Tommy turned the card so everyone could see it, “but they have Devisor listed on Angie’s card!”

Tommy’s mother stepped over to where the teens sat and took the card from her son. Reading it aloud to the group, “Code name, ACME, Abilities, Exemplar, classified, Devisor, classified, Gadgeteer, classified. Affiliations, Naval Research Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory and Department of Defense.” Looking over the top of the card at Angela, “What’s an ACME?”

Both teens began giggling as Angela’s father chuckled while Angela’s mother gave the young girl a motherly glare. “It’s where Wile E. Coyote gets all his stuff,” Angela almost whispered.

“What was that?” Tommy’s mother asked.

“It’s where Wile E. Coyote gets all the cool stuff he uses to try to catch the Road Runner,” Tommy volunteered. “But that’s not the problem, “Tommy continued, “having her rated as a Devisor means everything she builds has to go though some kind of testing now to see if it’s a devise or a gadget.”

“How’s that a problem?” Tommy’s mother questioned the teens.

Angela’s mother interrupted with the answer, “Devises cannot be patented. So anything Angela invents from here on will have to be tested before a patent can be filed.”

“And if it turns out to be a devise,” Tommy concluded, “No patent!”

Grabbing her purse Angela began rifling through it, “I almost forgot about these.” Angela pulled what looked like two teabags from her purse that she held out for her mother, “I made something during my tests that I thought were pretty handy so I improved the design and made these.”

Taking the teabags from her daughter, Angela’s mother began inspecting them closely. While they were about the size of a regular tea bag, the bag wasn’t made out of the porous paper that normally held the tea leaves, instead this looked to be made out of a fine metal mesh. Two small white wires coming out of the top of the teabag ended with what first appeared to be the common tag found on many mass produced tea bags, although the tag appeared to be made out of some hard nonmetallic material painted white to look like the tag on a normal tea bag. One of the tags had a thin blue stripe diagonally across both sides while the other has the same stripe but in red.

“What are these?” Angela’s mother questioned.

“They keep drinks hot or cold,” Angela beamed. “Depending on which one you use.”

Holding up one of the counterfeit teabags by the tag, “Blue for cold, red for hot?” Angela’s mother probed.

Angela nodded, “The tag is a heat exchanger, absorbing heat from the atmosphere for the hot one and releasing heat to the atmosphere for the cold one. The ones I made during the test didn’t have the external heat exchangers and quit working after a while. They’re powered by the thermal variance between the internal and external heat exchangers too, so no batteries.”

“Let me have a look at the one that keeps drinks cold,” Angela’s father held his hand out to his wife. Once she had handed over the one with the blue stripe he walked off into the kitchen area, returning a few minutes later with the mock teabag submerged in an amber liquid inside a whiskey tumbler. “I can already feel the glass cooling down,” Angela’s father grinned, swirling the amber liquid around inside the glass before holding it under his nose.

Talking a sip of the now chilled liquid, “Mmmm, the good stuff.”

Angela’s mother looked annoyingly at her husband, “There are times you can be worse than your daughter. That has not been through any product testing, as far as we know it could have any number of reactions with your whiskey. Furthermore I can’t believe you brought whiskey with us on the trip!”

Ignoring the looks his wife was giving him Angela’s father took another sip of the whiskey, “What? You can’t buy Templeton Rye this far away from Iowa!” Looking over where Angela sat, “Honey this thing has whiskey stones beat hands down, they’ll sell like hotcakes!”

“After they have been properly tested!” Angela’s mother grabbed the teabag by the heatsink/tag removing it from her husband’s glass.

“What do you mean the boy has disappeared, he has to be somewhere?” the portly silver haired man shot up to his feet sending the leather executive chair crashing into the shelves behind his desk.

“Yes sir, I know that,” The man standing in front of the desk agreed. “We’re pretty sure that his parents have enrolled him into a boarding school in New Hampshire under an alias. One of the cops tied to the botched job took an extended vacation. He showed up a few weeks later apparently visiting an old army buddy that works at the school. We believe the cop was the one that transported the boy there. The boy’s parents have made two trips on their company’s jet to Boston since. While we’re not sure about the first trip, their plane never landed in Boston on the second trip and their company credit card was used to purchase jet fuel at the airport in Berlin New Hampshire.”

“And this concerns me how?” The older man shouted, “Get a team together, go up to that damn school and grab the kid!”

“We’ve already positioned a team in the vicinity but there’s a problem,” the man took a small step backwards. “The school, It’s Whateley boss.”

“Fucking hell!” The silver haired man’s grew wide, “Your guys are smart enough not to step foot on school grounds?” Seeing the other man’s nod the older man continued, “If they catch the boy off school property, snatch him, but otherwise do nothing.”

“Sure thing boss,” the man turned to leave the office as his boss sat back down.

“Wait!” the underling heard his boss bellow as he reached for the door knob. Turning around to face his boss again, “Yeah boss?”

“Pull your team back, tell them to go home for now.”

“You sure boss?”

“Yeah, I got an idea,” The silver haired man grinned. “Hey also on your way out, tell Vince and Tony to go find that useless son of mine and bring him here.” Almost as an afterthought he stated, “Tell Vince and Tony to let my boy know I want to talk to him about this school he wants to go to.”

“I’ll let them know,” nodding as he opened the door and left.

Opening one of the drawers in his desk the older man pulled out a stack of papers, in bold letters at the top of the first page it read, ‘Whateley Academy Enrollment Application.‘