Shades From Beyond: The Tower Guard

     In the town of Blackwood there is a local legend that exists within the confines of a facility that everyone thought was a company that made robots for the war and for personal protection. The company was called The High Guard. My name is Claudia Groves and I had recently moved to Blackwood because I had been hired by The High Guard to aid in psychological therapy for the employees of the company and for the test subjects that they hired. Many of the employees from the company were former soldiers, cops, private investigators and military scientists.

        Many of the locals kept talking about the ominous figure that they had seen from afar in the tower of The High Guard facility. One of the locals named Josh Steinberg who was a local cop claimed that the so-called tower guard had arrested two dangerous criminals that were hiding out near the facility in a nearby abandoned shoe factory. Apparently, one of the criminals who was named Brian Wolford told Josh that the tower guard had a blurred face and that he was helpless along with his partner to obey all of the commands that the tower guard spoke. After that, both of the criminals went to find a police patrol which they did and turned themselves in. Josh could not believe it when he heard that the two criminals wanted to be arrested. After that, there were many more incidents where petty criminals would also face the tower guard and they would all end up in police custody. However, there was one hitman by the name of Rod Calkins who was hired by the local mob boss Roger Landel to take out the tower guard. Eventually, a few days later the hitman killed Roger Landel and all of his goons. In the aftermath of that bloody massacre the hitman Rod Calkins took his own life by shooting himself in the head.

      I was hired by Paul O'Brien and once I got into The High Guard facility I got to see certain things that were being created to protect the safety of the people. What I never expected was that inside the facility the former cops, soldiers and private investigators were under the process of being turned into psychic enforcers that could control the minds of others. Mr. O'Brien has told me that only one test subject has been successful. The test subject was a former prison guard by the name of Cale Blackstone. For the moment Blackstone was the only psychic guard that was created to get rid of all types of criminals. The people that made the feared Tower Guard were very impressed in how easily the enhancement drugs turned Blackstone into a man that could read the minds of every person and then control them. Also, there was also the new mental ability where the tower guard could control machines by reprogramming what they could do.

     They have tried to replicate their success, but they haven't been able to do so. The top scientists Mandy Bishop and Byron Dorr had tried to create more successful subjects and were working very long hours to do so. Cale Blackstone's abilities were exponentially growing. The first time I met Cale Blackstone he was an imposing muscular man that was at least six feet and six inches. In my first session we talked about things that he liked to do like working out with a CrossFit exercise routine, swimming, billiards and horseback riding. As it turned out Cale was raised on a farm in Indiana and he was a great basketball player when he was in high school. His uncle Raymond Blackstone was the sheriff of the town and Cale followed in his footsteps. During the rest of my sessions with Cale he liked to talk about his friends and his family and the years where he became a guard at a maximum security prison. There were times that he broke up a couple of fights along with other guards between rowdy inmates.

      A couple of weeks later I was told by Paul O'Brien that they had found a spy within The High Guard that killed herself once she knew that she was going to be detained. The spy was a woman by the name of Ethel Winters. Apparently, this woman had been sent by a foreign rival nation that was monitoring the progress that was being made. Afterwards, I found out that Cale could read the thoughts of any person and also access their memories. Cale would report anything suspicious to Paul O'Brien and to the owner of The High Guard Jacob Douglas. I did not like the idea of someone reading my mind and in the next session I told that to Cale. He apologized for keeping some of his abilities a secret, yet he told me that nowadays it was tough to really know who you could trust. I asked him if during our sessions he accessed any of my past memories and he told me that he had seen that I had been a lifeguard that had saved many people. Through my past memories Cale had seen that I dearly loved my family and that I was a loyal patriot. Cale also told me that he could tell if a person was showing him fake memories and fake past events and he knew that my memories were not fake as the fake memories would turn every thing and person in the memory into a gray color as if someone was watching an old classic movie. I then asked him if there were any other abilities that he had recently developed. He then did something that I did not expect as he asked me out on a date. I asked him why should I consider it and he replied that one of his newest abilities was seeing the future and he told me that we were both going to spend a lot of time together. He was right as he was the man that I eventually married. I kept working for The High Guard and when there were more successful subjects that could do what Cale could do he would train them to use their abilities. It was strange, I was not expecting that I would find a job that I liked which would also help to shape my personal life.

                                                                   The End