For the Future Generations is dedicated to God and to my beta readers
Melanie Benedict
Alfred Chesterton
Peter Ducai
Jon Evans
Kim Gloden
Nina Pavlovic
Natasha Quinonez
Robert Stebbins
Rob Watson
To
Victor Habbick for the cover art
To Cavin Jacobson and Melanie Benedict for helping with promotions
And to Ms. Amy Fenton, whose personage has been put to the test and whose spiritualities has been "refined through the fire" after putting up with my idiosyncrasies, cardiectomies, and big words this year and last.
Copyright © 2013 by Hannah Hacker
All Rights Reserved.
Prologue
Kansas City, Missouri
August 14, 2106
In a dark room of a doctor’s office facility, two curved metal chairs lined a section of a smooth wall made of black plastic. A young, sandy-haired woman and suntanned man occupied the chairs. They held a pair of identical twins girls. The girls’ forearms were fused; so much that one could not tell where one girl’s arm ended, and the other’s began. One sat on the father’s leg, and one on their mother’s. A little boy, a toddler; the girls’ triplet, with a head of soft strawberry curls, sat on his mother’s foot and rested his back against her leg.
“Daddy?” He moaned.
“Yes, Declan?” The boy’s father answered.
“Why do we have to go to the doctor at nigh-night time?” He questioned, his eyelids drooping as he looked into his father’s face. “I don’t want to get shots!”
“We’re not here to get shots,” his mother responded. “The doctor wants to talk to Daddy and me about Laken and Chaslyn.”
The humming of a circular floor-to-ceiling mechanical door as it unsealed the doorway ended their conversation and let a dim shaft of light into the room. A young man in his mid-twenties and wearing a long, white coat entered carrying an electronic notepad under his arm. He had an energy and enthusiasm in his walk that reflected someone relatively new to the field or a student. His eyes fell on the young couple in the guest chairs as the door fell back into place.
“Are you Kelvin and Ayla Channing?” He asked.
“We are.” Ayla answered.
With the aid of the dimming shaft of light, his focus shifted from the parents to the three sleepy-eyed toddlers that lay around them.
“And are these the triplets?” He questioned, with a broad smile lighting his face.
“Yep,” Ayla answered, bouncing the girl who was on her knee. “This is Laken.”
She nudged the boy with her foot and smiled down at him.
“This is Declan,” she introduced her son, “and the other one is Chaslyn.”
“Good to meet you all. I’m Ethan Johns,” the man introduced himself, extending a hand toward Kelvin.
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