Prediction

By L G Owens

Drs. Maier and Krause own their own OB/GYN clinic specializing in fertility issues. They are well known for their expertise in helping those conceive who were told by other experts that it would take a miracle for them to have a baby of their own and they would be better off adopting.
The two immigrated from East Berlin after the Berlin Wall was dismantled beginning in 1989. Their grandfathers worked as research scientists for the Nazi party studying Jewish children who had any type of abnormality or anomaly. The use of genetics were their greatest interest and how they came in to play where disease, hair, eyes, and skin color were concerned. Their greatest hope was to find a way to create the ultimate Aryan, super baby. They were also extremely interested in genetics where identical twins were concerned.
Dr. Oskar Krause followed his father's and grandfathers research and often used hormone and gene therapy on human embryos during in vitro fertilization without the parents knowledge.
Hanna and Marcus have been best friends for their entire lives. They are typical ten year old children to those who do not know them. Hanna has the ability to pick up on others thoughts and can predict when something bad is going to happen. Marcus can pick up on her feelings and some of her thoughts but her abilities are much stronger than his.
The two children think they just happened to cross paths with a bad man they call The mad scientist not realizing they were a part of Krauses plans all along. Together Hanna and Marcus work to save themselves as well as the other children Krause has kidnapped.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477227732

L G Owens

Linda G Owens lives in Virginia with her husband, Mike and her two canine babies. Bastian and Gaby. She is the mother of two grown children and has three beautiful granddaughters.

Book preview

Prologue

Hanna Walker and Marcus Turner are ten years old and have been best friends since the day they were born. The bond they have is a close one, and their parents find it hard to understand even though they have accepted the relationship as normal.

Children across the country have been kidnapped with most of them being identical twins who have gone missing. Hanna and Marcus stumble on to a house where they believe children are being held, but no one, not even their parents, believes them.

When Hanna and Marcus go missing, they leave behind clues to help the authorities find them. Hanna is very intuitive, and at times, she can move objects with her mind or manipulate others to do her bidding. Marcus is gifted as well but not like his friend, Hanna. He is stronger with her than without her. These gifts of theirs end up saving more than their lives.

Dr. Oskar Krause is a research scientist who specializes in fertility issues. He has been experimenting with hormone and gene therapy on embryos, fetuses, and children for years. Now he wants to find out how his therapy has affected the children years after receiving his therapy. His plans are to round up his children and further experiment on them.

Dr. Krause came up with his ideas after reading his father’s and grandfather’s research papers that date back to World War II, during a time when children were experimented on just for their differences. His grandfather worked with other scientists to develop the ultimate blonde hair, blue-eyed, Aryan baby.

Chapter One

The Clinic

Dr. Norbert Maier owned a very successful obstetrics/fertility clinic in Baltimore, Maryland, along with his friend and partner, Dr. Oskar Krause. Women came from all over the world just to have a consultation with either of them. After the women passed a thorough physical examination, along with a psychological workup, the doctors never turned down a potential client. The doctors believed that part of the process for a successful pregnancy was for the client to let go of the past and any negative feedback she had received from another doctor. The doctors truly believed in starting fresh as if this were their client’s first attempt to conceive. Drs. Maier and Krause had been successful in approximately 99.8 percent of their endeavors, and their confidence alone seemed to put their clients in a relaxed and positive frame of mind.

The two loved a challenge and had taken on patients who other prestigious doctors turned down because they felt the clients were absolutely incapable of becoming pregnant and were wasting their time and money on a lost cause. Some of their success stories included those clients who had gone through painful unnecessary procedures by unqualified doctors and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars only to be told they should give up and try adoption. These clients were now the proud parents of their own biological child or children.

The only drawback to coming to this particular clinic was the financial aspect of having the best. The clinic was very successful, and the doctors cared about their work. But they also enjoyed making money. Money was used to gain wealth, of course, but they also used it for the research they conducted in their own laboratory during their off hours. Once a potential client accepted the fact that the enormous fee she paid would result in a beautiful, healthy baby, money was no longer an issue.

The clinic itself had the atmosphere of a day spa that could put anyone at ease as soon as she walked through the double doors. The furniture in the lobby was modern and plush with bright, cheerful colors everywhere, including the walls, pillows, rugs, artwork, and so forth. Tropical plants and small trees were in the large space with a small pool that was home to a half-dozen large goldfish. In a small area off to the right, you could grab a quick snack or soda. You could also order a cappuccino, espresso, or just plain cup of coffee while you waited. The camouflaged check-in gave one the feeling she was visiting a posh day spa instead of a clinic.

The exam rooms were very cheerful and comfortable, but it was a clinic where medical equipment was necessary and could not be hidden. By the time the patient and her partner got to the examination room, they no longer cared that the resounding word spa that held them mesmerized while waiting in the beautiful lobby had deceived them.

The surgical suites were well lit with all of the necessary equipment needed to perform any and all procedures that aided and resulted in conception for their clients. There were two full-time anesthesiologists on staff, four nurses, a physician’s assistant, two nursing assistants along with the clerical staff, two laboratory technicians, and snack bar help.

They had their own laboratory with any type of lab equipment you could imagine and a few that Dr. Krause, who held the patents on them, designed. The two full-time lab techs drew blood, collected urine samples, and performed any and all necessary day-to-day testing. They also assisted the doctors with the more delicate procedures that were necessary for successful in vitro fertilization. Oskar (Dr. Krause) took care of the more intricate and complex testing with the doctors being the only ones who had anything to do with the eggs once they had been harvested.

The two friends worked together to develop the perfect cryogenic system to store any additional, leftover, or donated eggs. They patented their cryogenic system and made a fortune from it. The prototype had the ability to be used for other things besides human egg storage, just like the lab equipment Krause had invented. It could be used in many health-care facilities besides a fertility clinic.

Both of the doctors were known to use some of the spare eggs without the client’s consent. Some were used for those clients who were no longer capable of producing their own viable eggs while a lot of them were used specifically for research.

They also had an X-ray suite designed for their clinic’s special needs. The two were very proud of the time and effort they put into developing what they believed to be the best fertility clinic in the world, Maier and Krause Clinic.

Drs. Maier and Krause were originally from East Berlin, Germany. Even after the Berlin Wall was dismantled starting in 1989 and they, along with a few of their family members and friends, became citizens of the United States, they continued to think of themselves as part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a part of their heritage they refused to give up.

Norbert Maier and Oskar Krause’s grandfathers, friends during World War II and science researchers for the Nazi party, studied Jewish children who had any type of physical abnormality or peculiarity. They were also curious about twins and how genetics came into play with a person’s hair, eyes, skin color, as well as other physical differences. Being different during this time in history could put a child’s life in danger just for the simple fact of being noticed. Any child who stood out for any reason was sent to the researchers. Scientists performed tests and surgeries on many children, often torturing them while using them as human guinea pigs for their research. They were always hoping that, through research, they could find a way to create the ultimate Aryan super baby.

We now celebrate each other’s special and separate qualities, religious beliefs, politics, coloring, and so forth. Most parents encourage their children to accept differences amongst themselves and to embrace free thinking. We tell our children to be who they are or who they want to be and it’s okay to be unique. Most free thinkers of today agree there is only one race in the world, the human race.

In the early 1940s, their grandfathers were actually beginning to use gene therapy to try to change certain traits they didn’t like about their victims. The cruel men performed monstrous tests and studies, which often resulted in death, disfigurement, and horrible pain, not to mention the deep-rooted fear that embedded itself into these innocent children’s minds. Their grandfathers studied heredity and genetics while trying to discover how to manipulate one or the other with the use of drugs and hormones to perhaps get the results they were looking for.

Their experiments were cruel no doubt, and the cruelty extended to the psyche of the children (victims) as well as the physical pain. The doctors were cold, distant, and unemotional toward their subjects, refusing to view them as human beings. If they did so, wouldn’t they have to admit to themselves that they were monsters who tortured little children? The children they used for experimentation were locked away from all human contact except for the doctors who worked on them. No one told them or reassured them they were of any value, and the love they received came from each other.

Oskar’s father, an upstanding citizen and physician in Germany, did many good things with his research. He dreamed to come to America to further his father’s research that had begun during World War II in Germany. But his friends and family didn’t know that he had been kidnapping children and experimenting on them for years before retiring due to physical illness. He passed away shortly after his retirement.

When Oskar Krause Sr. retired, he handed all of his research material over to his son, Oskar Krause Jr., who was just beginning his own research in fertility and gene manipulation at the time. What he learned about his father’s crimes against children gave him the feeling he may be able to create the ultimate designer baby after all. He worshipped his father and thought of him as a genius. He, too, was not above the idea of taking children for his own research. Oskar’s huge dream in life had always been to create what he thought of as the perfect human being, and he refused to give up. His father had always encouraged him to follow his dream, no matter the cost.

After immigrating to the United States, Drs. Oskar Krause and Norbert Maier decided to open their own clinic after they had established themselves as ob-gyn doctors who specialized in fertility issues. They settled in Maryland to be near Washington DC. They wanted the chance to work with the wives of powerful men or powerful women in order to use what they had learned from their fathers and grandfathers, which could possibly have some effect on the government in future years. Over the years, they refined their studies and experiments and came up with their own methodology. They became very skilled at what they did.

Dr. Krause specifically liked the idea of having power over women. Helping them procreate and occasionally manipulating the egg, embryo, or fetus to see just how extreme the changes could be and to know he had made the changes without the parent’s knowledge or consent made him feel powerful and in control. He particularly felt powerful when he managed to manipulate twins to become what he wanted them to be. Dr. Maier had no idea that Krause had become so bold in his work.

It was a good day when Oskar realized he had a chance to manipulate identical twins. Perfecting the work was hard and took copious amounts of his time. He was more into research than Norbert had ever been. Over the years, Oskar perfected the use of gene therapy and was adept at splicing and manipulating the gene during in vitro fertilization. He also used this method during the zygote stage of fertility before the egg could even be called an embryo. He could introduce hormones into the embryo and then the fetus throughout the pregnancy without the mother having any knowledge of what he was doing. He studied the growth of the brain during pregnancy and did his best to develop a super brain in one of his victims. He injected hormones and a special chemicals he had produced, which aided the growth of certain brain cells that the average human being rarely used.

Krause named the drug Super Human Brain Growth Hormone or SHBGH, which the FDA had not accepted for use in humans. It could be used to help people with strokes, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, and a variety of other diseases and palsies. This drug had the potential to stop or slow the disease’s progression. In some cases, it helped to create enough new cells within the brain to compensate for the diseased cells in order to decrease the symptoms’ severity. The possibilities were limitless, but for now, he used it illegally to study a child, beginning with the embryonic stage, following the growth of the brain through the fetal stage to the newborn baby. He occasionally had the opportunity to study a specific child, beginning with the newborn stage all the way through puberty. Someday he hoped to follow a child’s brain growth from embryo to young adult. He was particularly interested in how the prepubescent child’s brain would react to such a drug as his before the pituitary gland became the most powerful force in the human body.

Once in a great while, a child would not survive his testing procedures that were begun during gestation, but he told himself everything was okay when that happened because most of the babies turned out perfectly normal and healthy. The color of their hair or eyes might not match the parents, but they never seemed to notice. He had been able to prevent some childhood diseases in susceptible children.

One of his goals, which he planned to put into action very shortly, was to round up as many of the prepubescent children who had received SHBGH, hormone, and gene therapy during and after gestation. He planned to kidnap them in order to have full access to them at all times. This meant he would have to track them down from all parts of the United States, and he would require outside help in order to do that. He could study the children at length without interruption, finding out what changes had occurred due to his full and complete therapy. After studying the changes, he could modify his therapy to achieve what he had hoped to. Then he would reintroduce these hormones to the older children so he could further study changes and/or side effects that may occur. The possibilities were endless as far as he was concerned.

Norbert was aware of his partner’s research, but he refused to have anything to do with it. He had no idea that his friend actually planned to acquire his special children, as he called them, to experiment on them and find out just how special they were. He didn’t recognize the fact that Oskar was becoming unhinged and had periods of delusions of grandeur as well as psychotic episodes. His grandfather and father had been known to have extreme mood changes during research with bouts of paranoia as well. Oskar, just like his father and grandfather, could be very savage with his victims during these episodes.

Norbert took care of the women before and after they had conceived with the help of known medical science for the most part. He didn’t do much of the research work anymore. He allowed Oskar to have full reign of that particular area of their business. He had no idea exactly what Oskar’s true passion was regarding his research, but Norbert so much wanted his partner to follow in his footsteps and work on becoming fully legitimate.

The two rarely had time to sit down and have a chat, so he couldn’t see that Oskar had become darker and more sinister where his research was concerned. Of course, they both had been breaking the law for years on certain levels, but Norbert wasn’t by nature an evil person. Oskar’s plans were becoming more evil, and it wouldn’t be long before the public would be aware of that evil, especially when the parents of children who had been kidnapped began to notice that it wasn’t just happening to their kin but to families all across the country. The children would disappear without anyone understanding why they were being taken. There would be no ransom notes or any contact with the parents. The children would simply vanish. If Oskar were ever caught, his friend and partner, Dr. Norbert Maier, would be investigated too.

Chapter Two

Hanna and Marcus

I’m so glad school is out. Now Marcus and I have almost three months to do as we please. Well, as much freedom as any two ten-year-olds are allowed to have. Best friends, we were born on the same day. We’re going to make tons of money by finding lost pets for people and collecting and splitting rewards, she thought.

The little blonde slowly made her way up the wide wooden steps that led up to the front porch of her home. The book bag she carried weighed almost as much as she did. As soon as she stepped through the front door, she shrugged her shoulders and body to release the enormous bag. It fell to the floor in the foyer with a loud thump.

Hanna, is that you? her mom called from the kitchen.

Yeah, it’s me! she yelled back.

Well, come in here, and let me see you, please.

Her enthusiasm waned. She had been on her way to the den to look at today’s paper. She slowly made her way into the kitchen.

How was your last day of school? Are you excited?

My mom always asks a lot of questions, she thought. I know she does it to make me feel like she’s interested in my life when she would rather get back to whatever she’s doing at the time.

It was fine, Mom. I guess I feel okay about it.

I don’t want her to know how excited I really am, she thought. Mom is a good mom, and I hate to use the word scatterbrained, but that’s who she is. She’s very in touch with her feelings and wants me to tell her about mine. She wants us to bond more. Well, if we still haven’t bonded after ten years of living together, I’d say we’re in big trouble. I love her, but we are as different as night and day.

She is always reading self-help books. Her latest is How to Improve Communication with Your Preteen Daughter. Since she began reading that book, I haven’t had a minute’s peace. All she wants to do is talk and ask me questions about my feelings. One of the chapters is all about the two of us having a girls’ day out. It’s more for the preteen. Both get new clothes and a new hairstyle to make your little girl feel more grown up, especially if your preteen is a tomboy. Then the two of us are to have lunch together and talk about our day, just like two women. The chapter is called Finding Common Ground (How to Get Your Daughter to Open Up to You). The book is full of bull. I can tell you that.

Here lately, she wants the two of us to be best friends, especially since my big sister Lori turned sixteen and began dating. Lori stays so busy with her friends and boys that she avoids our parents like the plague. Now, all of a sudden the attention is directed toward me, the youngest. I wish I had a baby sister or brother for my mom to concentrate on. Then I would be a little more invisible to her and Dad.

Marcus is my best friend and has been all my life. He lives in the house directly behind mine. Our mothers met at the doctor’s office during their pregnancies with me and Marcus. They said they had immediately become friends. I’ve heard them tell the story a million times as they talked over their morning coffee with the other stay-at-home moms. They both have a college education, but they wanted to stay at home after having their last child. So I guess the chance of having a younger brother or sister is out of the question since I’m the youngest.

Claire is Marcus’s mom, and she says they were about six months pregnant when their doctor moved out of the area and they were forced to find another obstetrician. Mom swears they were seven months along when they met. I’m more inclined to believe Claire. Mom never remembers anything exactly the way it happened.

The funny and weird part about it though—and this is the only thing they both have ever agreed upon in their entire lives—is the fact they had different doctors who had separate offices. Out of the blue, each doctor’s office closed, and the doctors moved out of the area at the same time. They each swore they hadn’t even received a call or note in the mail to tell them the office was closing. It happened that quickly. The only way they found out about the move was when they showed up for their scheduled appointments, only to find the doctor’s office had been closed. A sign hung on the door read, Due to a family emergency, the office is closed indefinitely. I advise all patients to find another doctor as soon as possible. In case of emergency, please go directly to the nearest emergency room. Sorry for your inconvenience.

That’s the weird part of this story. With different offices and different doctors, the sign was exactly the same. It was written using the exact same words, and the timing was the same. Both had appointments for the same day and time at their separate doctor’s office when they had received the bad news.

If Claire hadn’t said it was true, I probably would have thought Mom was exaggerating. They also just happened to make an appointment with the only obstetrician left in the area for the same day and just fifteen minutes apart. They had never met before that day, even though both of them had used the same doctor who helped them get pregnant, a fertility specialist. I guess that’s what’s you call ’em when they help women who have a problem getting pregnant. Anyway, he said the obstetrician in our area was a good one, and he encouraged Mom and Claire to make an appointment to judge for themselves.

He also encouraged Mom to come back and see him if she weren’t happy with Dr. Hofmann. Mom said her fear had been more about losing the baby than switching doctors. She and Dad had tried for several years to get pregnant before a friend of hers referred her to Dr. Krause, and after just one try with IVF, Mom was pregnant with me. Mom refers to me as her miracle baby whenever pregnancy comes up as a topic of conversation amongst her friends. Embarrassing! I always say.

Claire said she had gone through the same thing with Marcus, and after trying IVF just one time at the Maier Krause Clinic, she had become pregnant with twins but lost one of them around the eighth week. She said she was grateful for the one child but never got over losing Marcus’s twin brother. Dr. Krause told her it was a miracle she hadn’t lost both of them.

Dad encouraged Mom to visit the doctor before she drove herself crazy worrying about losing the baby. He also reminded her that Dr. Krause himself had told them the doctor was a good one and other doctors highly recommended him as well. Steven, Marcus’s dad, had to reassure his wife that her fertility specialist wouldn’t recommend him if he weren’t any good.

Claire Turner and Laney Walker (my mom) sat down beside each other and began talking the very first day they met. They became close friends fast and have remained close ever since. They both agreed an immediate connection had happened between the two of them. Claire said she felt a pull coming from deep inside of her when she entered the office. She said it felt like her large