“Wait? How did he end up with us instead of James Law?”
“He’d discovered a gene in your dad that he would later call a super human gene. The gene was laying dormant. He found a way to spark it to life in your dad, but he was too old, already set in his ways, so although it would spark to life, it would shortly sizzle out. Evidently, it’s a mental thing. He figured he could have a fresh slate in your dad’s seed. His mission then became trying to orchestrate James into having as many children as he possibly could. Children whose brains were young and fresh and easily programmable.”
He shook his head again. “Man…this punk was so involved in your pops life without him knowing it was ridiculous. He knew everything about yo’ oldman. Where he liked to drink, where he liked to buy his dope.”
“Dope?”
“Oh yeah! It was the 70’s, everybody was doing dope. Especially them boys who came back from Nam, they were real messed up in the head, including your pops. Which was how the doctor controlled him because he was going back and forward to the VA to get pills to help him deal with his PTSD.”
Rome’s phone began to vibrate on the table next to his laptop. Without looking to see who was calling he turned it off.
“Now because your dad couldn’t get right in the head, my guess would be thanks to the help of the good doctor, he hopped around from woman to woman. But what he didn’t know is the doctor was setting it up, so that he ran into certain women. Women who carried an X chromosome that in all sense and purposes made the superman gene in your dad more potent.”
I sat back in my chair, floored. There is no way this happened.
“I know this sh*t sound wild.” Rome said as if he could read my thoughts. “I felt the same way when this information first came to me. But it happened. Your mother had gone to the local clinic thinking she was getting another prescription for birth control pills. The good doctor had set it up so that the handsome James at the time was in her ear. Only she had not left with a prescription for birth control, but fertility drugs. So, when her and James lay together, she ended up having three of you instead of one.”
I used my fingers to massage my head. It was too much; this kid was rocking my world. How in the hell?
“James stayed around long enough to name you boys, but not much longer. And when he left, your mother was conveniently talked into giving you guys up for adoption. And that’s how you three ended up in the doctor’s hands. He studied everything about you.” Rome typed something on his computer before he turned it around to face me.
There was old footage of three little dark boys who all looked like me sitting in an all white padded room at a little round table drawing pictures. To the far right of the room was a one-way mirror, where I was sure we were being watched.
“Wow! Why is it I can’t remember any of this? I remembered being a small child growing up in my home with my par--…The Warrens.”
He shook his head. “All programmed thoughts. He put you guys through hell. He found that the only way to activate the gene in you and your siblings was by fracturing your minds and creating the alters who don’t feel.” He paused for just a moment. “Without emotion, brotha, you have superpowers.”
It took me a moment to process all of this, I had so many questions.
“So all my siblings have alters?”
He nodded. “And this is the truly fascinating part. The five of you all shattered in a different way. In studying your particular alter, they saw that he was approachable and could communicate quite well with people. He could even convince those around him that he cared for them and was even concerned. They named him The Politician 373493.”
“In studying one of the other triplets, they noticed a bully nature in both him and his alter. If he wanted something that you or your other brother had, he would simply take it, the same with his alter. His alter did things in true bully fashion. He didn’t just kill, he made one look bad while doing it. If he was thirsty he would just take a drink out of someone’s hand. They named his alter The Bully 373492.”
“The last triplet was something of a loner in many ways, he was quite the mystery to the doctor. Although he stayed close to you and your other brother, he was quiet and kept to himself, read a lot, even seemed to think very deeply on different matters. His alter was something of a ghost. It killed before you even knew what happened, they called it The Loner 373491.”
“What about my little sister?”
“Now your sister was the doctor’s greatest achievement, he became obsessed with her. Her mother was the last woman to be with your father before he was murdered in a car accident. The doctor pulled Debra from a juvenile detention center.”
“Debra?”
Rome nodded. “Your father had named you all after biblical characters. As I was saying, Debra got locked up for life for killing her mother’s boyfriend who stabbed and killed her mother while trying to rape Debra.”
I frowned. “No court in America would send her to jail for life for such an offense.”
Rome chuckled. “It would if the Doctor had something to do with it. It was how she ended up in his grasp. You see he was having trouble with you boys. Although he could get you to do what he demanded, there was always a rebellious streak in all of you. He could sense your hate for him. In his fear that you all would one day kill him, he erased himself from you and
