Among the Fallen: Resurrection (2 page)

In 1888, Reverend Goliath Washington tortured and murdered Native Americans in Blackwater Abbey whist he lived in the East Wing, acting as the Religious Consultant to then Catholic Beaumont family. According to historic evidence and documents, he used to perform torturous experiments by the name of religion. He believed that in order to communicate with the dead you had to carve your message on a person before releasing them to the other side, where the receiver of the message could read it. How Washington managed to import the Native Americans without suspicion still eludes historians today, some believe he used the complex cave networks beneath the abbey and it’s very possible that they could even extend miles into mainland, which could explain how he managed such feats of deception.

What made this very peculiar was that both Washington and Sullici claimed to be under demonic possession by the Abbey itself, a theory debunked by most Parapsychologists and researchers. One theory is that Lucius Beaumont himself walks the corridors of Beaumont’s mansion possessing the weak in order to continue his unearthly obsession with satanic worship, a conjecture that is widely believed. What makes this claim even stranger is that workers throughout the centuries in Blackwater Abbey have claimed to have seen ghosts in many different forms, including noises, poltergeist activity and full body apparitions; however, there is no recorded sighting from any Beaumont family member ever.

In 1912, a fire ripped through the Abbey destroying more than half of it, reducing two of its major wings to rubble. When surveyors worked on the clean-up operation they found more than a hundred Native American skeletons and partial remains from bodies that dated back to the 17th century, thus adding weight to the Lucius rumour. Found within an inherent cave complex under the Abbey, they were stacked standing and studies found marks on the bones that showed signs of composite medical procedures, wounding and torture. Further examination of the caves revealed some of the caves went down as far as a hundred feet, and scientists concluded the passageways and rooms under the Abbey were nowhere near natural in origin. However, it was deemed impossible that the tools existed to create such complex caverns and as such; theories are divided as to their source and construction, with some claiming them to be nothing more than an enigma of nature.

Bromley Beaumont, who reigned as the Mayor of Blackwater from 1893 to 1958, who incidentally was the father of the current occupier, Grayston Beaumont; was said to have returned the remains to the Native American People with a generous donation and reportedly sealed all entrances to the caverns. The damaged Abbey, however, was never rebuilt and what was left was turned into Beaumont Mansion Estates, and that is how it remains to this very day.

Mayor-ship has not always been in Beaumont’s family. In 1958, Bromley Beaumont was thrown out of the seat during a vote of no confidence after the discovery of the Native American remains, throwing the Beaumont name into a cleverly constructed smear campaign by Morris Whitely, who was elected as Mayor soon after by the people; he then served for eleven years. Whitely was the engineer responsible for the establishment of the cable car transportation system and also made contributions to the city’s electrical system. In his campaign to modernize the city, he made a deal with the Beaumont Corporation and its founder Grayston Beaumont, which provided funding for several of Whitley’s projects, including public utilities, welfare work and law enforcement.

Unfortunately, dependence on the Beaumont’s funding meant the city council could be easily swayed to the company’s demands. By early 1969, the city was effectively under corporate control, and Grayston replaced Mayor Whitely with himself restoring the Beaumont name. Additionally, the island was the corporation’s official hub with both Beaumont Pharmaceuticals and the Beaumont Corporation Headquarters, chaired and directed by Grayston Beaumont. The Beaumont family provided the back bone of the city and one of the reasons why technology and construction wise; Blackwater was more than well advanced; making it one of the most desirable locations to live in the States.

The Beaumont Corporation is a bio-engineering pharmaceutical company based in Blackwater, with Labs and complexes in Eastern Europe, England and Asia. It is said to be a major international player in a number of markets, including pharmaceuticals, medical hardware, defence, and computers along with more covert operations utilizing genetic engineering and indicted viral weaponry. The corporation is also presented as having a more civic face, producing cosmetics, consumer products and foods. One of the Beaumont Corporation’s subsidiaries is the BSCS, also known as the
Blackwater Security Countermeasure Service
, a private military contractor with a highly trained protection force capable of rescue and investigation paramilitary operations. The corporation also uses its secret Special Forces group to secure and protect its assets and high profile employees. To this day, the Beaumont Corporation is one of the largest bodies in the global market for its field and even silently funds other major corporations in the western world, including industries such as videogames, public security, entertainment and construction. The corporation’s affiliation with the American Government at present is unknown; but it can be safely assumed the organization has some sort of political influence and silent partnership.

The GDP or Gross Domestic Product of Blackwater remains unknown, but its economy was largely dominated by the Beaumont Corporation, and it can be assumed most of the population was fairly prosperous. Approximately forty percent of the city’s inhabitants were believed to be directly employed with the company working in its many legal businesses, including pharmaceuticals and computing. However, only a select few knew of its alleged illegal activities in bio-engineering offering some of the best health plans, pensions and wage packages in the States. The corporation generously financed most of the city’s infrastructure, including the tram and subway system under the
Crystal Century Project
in a bid to improve public relations. The rumoured Bio-Weaponry Division is just that, rumour. Nevertheless, as far as rumours goes to its very solid and mostly ignored among the community of Blackwater.

In 2008, Blackwater managed to privatize forty percent of its own Police Force providing the B.S.C.S

trained troops and enforcement officers on the streets as well as taking on SWAT type missions for the Police with impressive results. On the 5th August 2008 during its debut mission, it is rumoured that just five of these soldiers were dropped on the roof of
Juniper Towers
apartment block after a one-hundred member strong cult took the building’s resident’s hostage. Within the hour, all cult members were dead with only four civilian casualties and two deaths, which were by the hands of the cult members themselves. All news reports and footage from the event were seized by Beaumont Corporation and still to this day; no footage exists of these enigmatic soldiers.

The
Guardian Project
as it was known, received a mixed bag of feedback with some claiming Blackwater was used as a testing ground for the program; a mere experiment of the Beaumont Corporation’s power before it was presented to other cities in the States, showcasing the benefits of a privatized Police Force. Opinions were mostly positive as the city’s crime rate managed to drop an impressive sixty percent in just the first year, sending the mostly corrupt businesses underground in fear of appearing on the super cop radar.

Finding the city was never the problem nor was visiting the city for that matter, you could drive up the one road leading into Blackwater in about an hour taking exit 89 from freeway 28874. However, if you wanted to live there, it was somewhat more difficult; you had to have money for a start; a trade to benefit the city and even then you had to stand before a committee and beg like dogs.

With more than a thousand suburban applications every year it is rumoured the Blackwater Residential Panel, governed by Mayor Beaumont also; was one of the hardest panels on the Eastern Seaboard to stand in front of. Once a residential application was approved, each family was given a pass-card, so they could come and go as they pleased, which meant visitors to the city had to obtain temporary pass cards stating their purpose of visit, length of stay as you would at any given airport in the States. Although visiting the city was obviously free of charge, overstaying your welcome came with a heavy fine costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Blackwater for all intentional purposes was a fortress protected from vagrants, wanderers and immigrants and was hailed a success with only three other cities in the States following suit.

Chapter Two: Alexandra Beaumont

One of the three-million citizens who lived in Blackwater city was Alexandra Beaumont, daughter of the Beaumont Corporation Industrialist and Mayor, Grayston Beaumont. She was a typical, bolshie and arrogant twenty-one-year-old, not the most stunning girl on the planet but was never short of attention, especially from testosterone fuelled thugs her own age. She was a tiny five foot two, dark haired, brown-eyed shopaholic that wouldn’t exactly stand out in the crowd, but the type any woman-loving male wouldn’t turn down either.

Generally, she lived day by day and kept herself to herself. Alex from birth was well off; she had a five percent stake in the corporation which was set up by her late mother before she was born. Despite her and her father’s volatile relationship, it was one of the only things that were solid between them and Grayston honoured the contract to the letter as it was his wife’s dying wish.

Although Alex’s stake lawfully gave a substantial part of the corporation, she never exercised any rights of knowledge or even cared to be involved in the organizations business in any way whatsoever; one of the very few things that her and her father agreed upon. They lived in the same mansion on Blackwater Island, but Alex always felt like she was placed as far away from her father as possible. She had everything when it came to money, but as a family she had nothing; just a workforce that she had befriended and sadly, that was all she had her entire life.

Alex was famed for a lot of things and most of them were quirky, if somewhat devious character traits. Being rich from birth she never really had to work hard at anything, and popularity automatically followed her anywhere she went. Whether it was her unique husky voice or her much gossiped about night-time activities, Alex was always the centre of some attention, whether she wanted to be or not. She was never spoilt; her money was hers and everything she ever bought either for her or her sister was paid for by her.

Surprisingly independent for a rich girl, she actually breezed through life on face value alone, her private and somewhat disturbing home life was always kept quiet, but there was a second side of her that was specially created for those around her. Alex basically befriended anyone, but trusted very few. Most of the staff at Beaumont Estates she got on with bar a few and the best friend she had; Collette Walker, was actually Dorm Cleaner and Maid at Beaumont Estates. Alex was always rigging her timesheets and rotors without her father’s knowledge to get her out and about with her whenever possible. She was not the only one either; Alex was so defiant of her father that most of the time; half the work forces at Beaumont Estates were hardly there but with full pay; which at one point, her defiance actually led to the whole workforce accidentally having the week off which presented the biggest lecture in father daughter history, which Alex later boasted that her father was just pissed that there were no instructions on the toilet paper. That be said, Alex was almost ashamed of her money, okay, so she couldn’t live without it, but she mostly spent her nights down in the staff recreational room in the worker’s dorms under the house. She was not afraid to rub shoulders with poor, and in fact; she always preferred their company over her father’s friends hands down because she claimed their personalities were purer.

Alex’s mother; Sherry Beaumont, died when Alex was a baby, a viral infection was the result of an inquest, but when Alex researched her mother in her early teens whilst working on a school project, there wasn’t a great deal of information available. The ugly truth, however, is that on the 11th April 1991; Sherry was rushed into a hospital with violent stomach cramps, blood discharges and sickness. Having taken the Beaumont family by surprise, this strange and closely instantaneous sickness ripped throughout her body while she carried Alex in the final stages of pregnancy almost killing them both immediately. Grayston Beaumont offered all the medical teams involved ridiculously big bonuses in desperation, but it did not save Sherry’s life. The mystery infection actually targeted her organs and life-support systems as if it was, in fact, executing her deliberately.

She died at approximately 23:11pm and Alex was born just before her mother’s sad death, and from that moment on Grayston blamed Alex for it, resenting her and hating her for it in some kind of defence mechanism. The truth was that Alex was a carbon copy of her mother in almost every way conceivably possible right down to mannerisms, personality and even looks. The older Alex got the more her father rejected her, casting her aside ruthlessly and coldly. Alex was always aware of her father’s feelings towards her, but the staff at the Beaumont’s estate had a great hand in the way Alex was brought up and raised, hence her preference to hang and loiter with the workers rather than the rich and business-like company her father kept.

By Alex’s sixteenth birthday, she was filled with enough mutual resentment for it to physically appear that she was unaffected on the outside and around staff. On the inside however she was aching for a parent, bitterness and twisted love bordering disturbing levels, which soon resulted in nightmares, sleepless nights and general feelings of persecution and emotional neglect.

All Alex has to remember her mother by are a few shattered and vague memories, strange and curiously remembered metaphors from when she was a baby. A lot of people claim Alex’s memories of her mother are merely memories conjured up by her subconscious, like an off-the-wall defence mechanism to help her deal with the absence of a mother figure in her life; a theory Alex denies flat out. All Alex ever craved as a child was a mother, and she had many step forward in the form of babysitters and nannies, but in her heart and soul, there was always something missing.