Lisa Trevor was discontent. Her lifestyle had been disturbed. For a few years now she had been living in the Arklay forest. She had learned to stay away from people, hidden from prying eyes, and hunt wild animals for food. Occasionally she would sneak close to the mansion grounds to steal supplies. But always in secret, careful not to be seen, as the humans represented a threat and uncertainty to her.
But now she had been brought from hiding by a familiar presence. The man she had not seen for so long. Not since those days she preferred not to think about.
But the scent of him didn't send her to hiding. Instead she felt drawn to it, wondering what he was doing there. Had he come back to her? To take her back? And why that thought did not fill her with dread and anger?

And now that he was in the place where Mother slept, she had to go there to be sure Mother was safe. She would go there and stop him from hurting Mother (or was he trying to wake her up?).

And there he was. Lisa came to a halt as an unfamiliar sensation fell over her, all the feverish anxiety to get there and act now disappearing and leaving her to stand in front of him. She knew she should have attacked him, ran away, or done something. Instead she found herself just standing there, uncertain what to do.

While Lisa hesitated, the other man, whom she had almost completely ignored this whole time had pushed the stones surrounding the coffin to the abyss. As the lid of the coffin slid off, Lisa turned around, sensing the scent of her mother.

And there was her mother's skull, her scent still lingering in the bones. Carefully, Lisa lifted the skull from the dust, trying to remember Mother's face, and imagine how it could have rested on those bones. So focused was she that she failed to notice how the other man sneaked behind her and pushed her off.

Lisa fell into the darkness.

It was dark and damp. Lisa slowly rose to a sitting position, trying to remember where she was. The familiar scent of her mother brought it all back. Lisa poked the grinning head. There was no response, not that she expected there to be.

Mother was gone.

Lisa thought about it again. Mother was gone, but she didn't feel sad.
No, that wasn't true. She missed Mother, but she had known. Mother was dead, and wouldn't come back. She would not even start moving again like those people in the laboratories and the mansion. Her smell, even though clearly her's had been the scent of the dead. All life had disappeared, only leaving the bones and some hair behind.

Lisa realised she felt relieved. It was like a huge weight had been lifted off her hunched shoulders, as she realised she didn't have to stay here anymore, waiting. But at the same time she felt scared. For years she had been looking for her mother, and now that she had been reunited with her, she had lost her goal, her meaning in life.

What would she do now? She thought about the cottage she had been living in these last few years, but going back there felt wrong. All had changed, going back there now would be impossible. Living in there like she used to would not work.

All had changed when He had returned here.

Lisa stopped in her thought. There it was again. The weird feeling in her stomach whenever she thought of him. It was like someone was pinching her guts, but it was not a bad feeling, not at all...

Lisa didn't have much use for names, and usually she just thought of him as Him, but she knew what the blond man was called by others.

She decided to try saying his name aloud, quietly, in case someone would hear:
"Wes- keerr"

It felt like someone dropped something warm on her stomach, her cheeks behind the borrowed faces felt hot, and she giggled.

"Wessssss-kerrrrrrr"
She rolled the name around in his mouth feeling the soft s and harsh r on her sensitive tongue. She listened her voice echoing in the gorge, a while after the original sound had stopped, and giggled again.

"Wesker"
The echo answered her yell:
"kerr, ker,ker"
She stopped, realising that she was making a lot of noise, and that someone might hear her.
He, no, Wesker might hear her.

She thought about their last meeting, and felt the warmth on her face again, but this time it was brought there by shame. He had been right in front of her, and she had just stood there like an idiot. She should have done something to impress him, like scaring him with a mighty shriek, or smashing the other man to little bits. What was he thinking about her now? That she was like those stupid rotting men that wandered around even after they were already dead? She could never face him again!

Lisa made her decision. She would just sit here in this darkness, until she would be just bones and some dried up skin like Mother. Maybe Wesker would come back some day and realise she had been sitting there alone until her lonely death, and then he would feel sorry.

Content with this plan, Lisa sat silently in the dark, listening the sound of dripping water. "Drip"
"Drip"

"Drip drip"

"Drip"
"Drip"

"Drip"

Lisa was just about to hit the stone wall to bits in the hope that it would make the stupid water silent when she sensed something.

There was something, no, someone.
She stood up, smelling the damp air in the hopes of catching the scent again.
She felt puzzled. It was a familiar smell, but at the same time so different. What was going on?

She started to climb the stone wall. It was damp, and she fell few times, but after first metres she found out that by leaning her back to the other side of the crevice she could stay in place while finding new handholds.

At the same time Wesker was waking up to his new life Lisa struggled to get to the surface.

Eventually the rock shaped by nature gave way to stone walls and she found herself in a tunnel that lead to a steel door. She tried to push it open, but it resisted her attempts to do so. She tried to find a handle, but there only was a circular hole where it should have been.

The door could be opened with a tiger emblem that could be found in the cupboard in the kitchen after you used the hexagonal crank to turn the statue in the main hall. Lisa, for understandable reasons, did not know this.

So she took a step back and swung her manacles at the door. After two more swings the door gave in, and fell off it's hinges. Content with her problem-solving abilities, Lisa stepped through, and found herself in the underground laboratories.

She didn't like places like this. The all-too-familiar sights and smells almost made her turn around and give up.

But then she sensed him again. She followed the scent, occasionally swatting away a bothersome chimera.

She turned around the corner, and there he was. Dumbfounded, she stopped, taking his appearance in. He smelled like blood and sweat and like.
It was like now he had in him something extremely familiar. Lisa squealed. They had so much in common! Surely this was a sign, this was fate.
Lisa shook herself. This was it, she would have to act now. Impress him, to make him hers and maybe get a kiss ( a vague idea that she could barely admit to herself).

She walked slowly towards him, only to be stricken down by a swarm of bullets.
She got up, only to see how the elevator doors closed.

Again she had been left behind.

Certainty swelled in her. She knew how she would prove her worth to him, make him notice.
She would best him in battle, fight him and prove she was stronger.

And so she began hitting the doors, pounding them, destroying them.
Lisa then climbed the elevator shaft, rising to the mansion.

Lisa let out a frustrated yell.
Why could she not get to him?
Over the years Lisa had gotten used to her restraints, to the point she considered them a part of her, but now she cursed them. Unrestrained Wesker was able to move more freely, always getting away from her.

But now he was right in front of her. Now she would get him!

Lisa charged, leaping towards Wesker, who raised his gun.
And then the chandelier dropped, and once again, darkness claimed Lisa Trevor.

Lisa looked around, only to be greeted by the wasteland that had replaced the mansion and it's grounds. Her home was gone.

Coming to this realisation, she felt the existential shock for a moment.

After few seconds she got over it. Her life here was already over. She fought against the tears. It had been a mistake, going after him. What has she been thinking? Why would someone like him be interested in her?

She licked the salty tears away from her face.
She thought about trying to find his tracks and following him, but she could not try again.
Lisa just wanted to forget the whole thing.
She should have just stayed in the darkness with her Mother. At least then she would not have made a complete fool of herself.

She sat down on a piece of rock that was still warm from the explosion.
So deep was Lisa in her thought that she didn't notice the other (more or less) living figure in the ruins before he spoke to her:

"Hello, my name is John."

At this point the reader will rack his or her brain wondering if this John is an OC or if there are characters named John in the RE canon. If they have played the first game or if they just happen to have a thing for tidbits of information you will never need and that only make you a major nerd, they will know that there is one John in Resident Evil universe. And indeed, this is the very same John whom Ada Wong dated in order to get information and who used her name as a password for his computer.

The reader might also wonder how exactly is he here, since he was supposed to be dead, zombified and blown away with the mansion. So to answer these (quite justified) questions, here's a flashback:

John hid behind the makeshift barrage, peering out between the upturned table and a broken computer. It had been two days now, since the doors had been locked by the security system and the escape had been made impossible. Most of the researchers had panicked and quickly fallen victims to the virus. It would have not been correct to say John had kept calm and collected. No, he had panicked, but in his case the panic manifested instead as a stubbornness to stay alive rather than running around. He kept moving around the laboratory, making sure he always had at least one clear route of escape.

Most of the staff had locked themselves in the morgue, believing the bolted steel doors would keep them safe. They had been wrong, as the screaming that was soon silenced, had told John. He guessed one of the more agile T-virus creations had crawled there through the ventilation shaft.

But now he was running out of ammo, especially since he had been hungry and eaten some of it. He had found magnum rounds (but oddly enough, no gun) around the lab. But even if he would have had a gun, John suspected he wouldn't have known how to use it. So he had resorted to another survival plan, and faced the wandering horde of zombies and mutants equipped with sausages and a bag of plant fertilizer.

First he had made himself as unappetising as possible. Luckily, some of the scientists were researching using plants as bioweapons, and had sacks of fertilizer (which had been left mostly unused, as T-virus infected plants tended to get their nutrients other, more bloody ways). John had a vague idea what they had in them, and wanted to keep that idea as vague as possible. But the bad smell was all part of his master plan. And he had gotten used to the stink eventually.

But that was not enough, as a hungry zombie will settle for a stinky meal, if there is nothing better on the menu. So John had made a visit to the food storage and filled a container meant for the biohazardous waste (so that the scent wouldn't escape and attract any unwanted attention) with bloody steaks and juicy sausages. So when faced with a situation where running away wasn't the best option, he threw the food at the monsters and made his escape while they were fighting over it.

John had been clearly the best student back in medical school, and had had plans to become a researcher. He had been a big fish in a small bond back then. And then he had been scouted by the Umbrella corporation. And to continue the analogy, the fish had noticed he was medium-sized at best and that he had been plucked out of his cozy little bond and thrown into a lake with hungry T-virus infected sharks who would eat you if you as much as looked at them funny.

So he had made his career by being inconspicuous and making sure he was good at what he did, but not good enough to raise any unwanted attention or have any responsibility. But that strategy had been thrown out of the window when he had been made the head researcher of Arklay labs two months ago.

The things had been going from bad to worse, and when the job became available, there weren't many who were willing to apply for it. Things were already looking bad, mistakes had been made, the exact reason why the last head of research had lost his job, (among another, more vital, things). John was reminded of the situation you often saw in comedies; men are standing in a row, and their commander asks the voluntary to take one step forward. Then all but one unlucky bastard take a step backwards, and he stands out and gets sent out to the death-mission or to clean the toilets.

That's basically how John, a man who had trusted to stay in the background, suddenly found himself in a leading position on a sinking ship.

And now he was in the middle of a zombie-apocalypse and the lack of sleep and exhaustion was catching up with him. John thought the letter again. Yes, it sounded very dramatic. Not to mention the whole thing with "make sure the world will know the truth" had a nicely heroic sound to it. He had written the letter just in case, and was beginning to think this really was it. The end of the line. Soon some monster would get him, and he too would join the ranks of the undead (granted, not a very scientific term, but if these were not zombies, then what?). Or maybe he would just be eaten and torn apart before the virus could transform him as a one of them. He had not noticed any signs of the infection in himself yet. He would have wanted to believe he wasn't infected, but the test had been positive. Apparently T-virus infection"s speed could wary more in different people he had previously assumed. If only he could get to Raccoon! The Umbrella facilities there could hold a cure.

He thought about Ada again, and how lucky he had been (up to the point of this whole killer virus outbreak, obviously), and like always, a small, realistic part of him couldn't help but to wonder what a woman like her exactly saw in him, and if she had ulterior motives, but like always, a noisy part of his brain silenced all doubts, announcing that yes, sometimes good things do happen to bad people. Not to mention that miss Wong was a very attractive woman, so some naughtier parts of his male anatomy hastily agreed and pointed out that sometimes you should just take the good things as they came and not ask stupid questions.

John saw a zombie shambling in the corridor. One zombie was not a threat, but John had not survived this long by underestimating them. So even when he recognized the zombie as the late Charles Lemming who had always acted like a stuck up brick even before his death, John resisted the urge to make him trip over and laugh. That's what had gotten lab assistant Matthew West who had been so focused with crumbling lab reports into balls and throwing them at his zombified boss while yelling "now who's misspelling mitocondrio, huh!?", that he hadn't noticed another zombie behind him that had made sure Mr West wouldn't have to worry about spelling ever again.

The late Dr. Lemming was still far away. Apparently he saw something extremely interesting in the computer mouse he was apparently trying to first disassemble and then eat, piece by piece. At least this one had not taken it's clothes off. John had observed certain exhibitionist tendencies in some of the laboratory workers after their deaths, and suspected it had something to do with the freeing of the tendencies usually repressed by the modern society. He liked that explanation. This whole fighting-for-survival-thing had really brought out a philosopher in him.

John did not trust that computer electronics would win in a zombie taste test when there were juicy fertilizer-coated human steak available, so he backed away, until his back was against the wall. The zombie was still far away and there was only one, and he didn't want to waste any of his sausages so he decided to observe and if it didn't wander off he would just find another way around.

Suddenly it raised it head (so suddenly in fact, that John could see a part of a rotten ear-lobe fly off and land on the computer screen) and turned. At first John thought he had been seen, but it started moving towards something John couldn't see.

Suddenly parts of the brain joined the earlobe on the screen, as the zombie's head exploded. John retreated behind the corner. From there he saw the man who had shot (whose feet hadn't quite yet realised he was dead yet, and were desperately trying to rise up). John had seen the tall, whitehaired man once or twice, and knew he worked in the paramilitary department. He also knew he was apparently from Russia, possessing thick accent and Russian name John couldn't remember at the moment.

But he knew enough about Umbrella officers not to assume he was there to help the survivors. He also had two gorillas (strangely inhuman, but too human-looking to be tyrants) with him. They stepped over the twitching remains of and headed towards the inner lab. But hope, something John had almost abandoned had started to flicker again. Even if those people were not here to help, they had arrived with the elevator, meaning they had disabled the safety protocols that had kept John from using it and escaping from the laboratory.

After escaping from the mansion, however, John had found himself in the dark forest, and after wandering around in the dark for what felt like hours he was hopelessly lost and after falling in two trenches also getting cold. Once in a while he could hear a helicopter, flying around the mansion, but he was unable to contact it, and even if it's crew could somehow see him, what could they do to help him? So he wandered in the forest that looked so different in the dark that John, who had taken walks in there sometimes, was soon lost.

Suddenly there was light. No the sound of explosion, though, at least not for John, who lost his hearing in the blast and fell in a trench the third time.

After recovering and climbing out of the water (and mud, actually it was filled mostly with mud) he started to make his way towards the smouldering ruins. He was disheartened to notice how close he still was to the mansion, despite walking in the dark for so long ( and he had thought he was walking straight all the time too).

The mansion was gone. It had disappeared and been replaced with a crater. John blinked, looking at the surreal sight before him. The mansion-poof gone!
The infected staff -poof and gone!
The tyrant project - Poof! Took off! Flew away! Maybe the mansion grew wings and took flight, as sick of this place as him!
John let out a gurgling laugh, borne more from lack of sleep, exhaustion and relief more than any real humor he saw in the situation.

It was finally over. He knew he was middle of a forest, in the dark, and who knew what lurked in there, but he had won! He had not died in the mansion.
John had been on the edge for two days. He had survived the outbreak. He knew he wasn't on the clear yet, but he just couldn't care anymore.

It was then that he saw someone moving in the depris. He yelled (since his hearing hadn't fully returned yet): "Hello, my name is John"
No answer. Instead the figure slowly turned towards him. John assumed he was being stared at. He wasn't sure, since he couldn't quite make out where his (no, he corrected himself, her) face was.

Now the reader might wonder how John, an Umbrella scientist, did not recognize Lisa Trevor, an important research and test subject of Umbrella, but there is a simple explanation.
As anyone who has ever visited one of Umbrella Corporation's facilities has noticed, the company in question goes to great lengths to confuse their employees and make sure their working conditions are as unpractical as possible. Part of this brilliant strategy is to make sure their staff knows as little about the projects of other branches as possible. Also, because in order to write a memo and post it to other labs requires searching for three different insignias (every single time, because other people have to use them too, and this leads to them being misplaced again and again) getting the information to move is such a pain most researchers simply won't bother.

And let's not forget Ozwell Spencer is maybe slightly more paranoid, then even filthy rich people have right to be, and believes that the left hand should not knot what the right hand does, so it will be harder for it to give the middle finger and bite the hand that feeds it by handing the reseach data over to competition.

It's true that encountering a not-exactly-human creature in the ruins of a mansion that was filled with superhuman mosters might set some alarms off, but due to the exhaustion-induced temporary mental disorder, John did not ran away screaming.
Instead, he opened the container and thrust it forward: "Would you like to have some sausages!?"

And then he fainted.

Lisa Trevor was confused. She knew how to deal with people who tried to hurt her (rip their faces off), or people who ran away screaming after seeing her (chase them down and then rip their faces off), but this man had... given her a present.
She carefully took a bite of the sausage, but quickly put it back in the box.
What if she had heard him wrong? What if he hadn't meant to give this present to her?
And besides, accepting a gift from a man she didn't even know! Surely that would be... improper.

She took another look at the unconscious figure at her feet. He smelled like the forest, but under that smell there were the scent of flowerbeds and also other stuff she couldn't quite identify (but if she would have realised they were the smells of a laboratory worker, she might have noticed why it reminded her of certain someone).

And talking about him, a certain sunglasses-wearing man popped into her mind. She really shouldn't take gifts from other people, she thought, but somewhere in the back of her mind there rose a defiance. It was none of his bussiness if she accepted gifts from other people! And hadn't she just decided to give up on that road that only led to chandelier dropping on you, instead of... Actually, Lisa had only a very vague idea where it was supposed to lead, but she was certain it should involve more stuff like flowers and hugs and even sausages then dropping chandeliers on you and blowing up your home without even saying goodbye.

She took another look at this John.
And there was a man who gave her gifts and didn't drop chandeliers or anything else on her! She made a decision. Lisa picked the man up, and after making sure he was not dead (by shaking him until she was rewarded with a moan and a "five more minutes...") threw him on her shoulder.

After listening the forest a while, the huchbacked figure took off, leaving the smouldering ruins of her home behind.

He was moving. He was also laying in an uncomfortable position. He also had a head-ache.
Those were the things that invaded John's mind through the veil of unconsciousness.

Suddenly he remembered what had happened. The virus outbreak, monsters and infected, still-moving carcasses.

Lisa noticed the man on her shoulder regained consciousness as he started to wiggle and shout.
Grateful she wouldn't have to carry him around anymore, Lisa let go of him, and the man fell on the ground.

John couldn't see anything, it was too dark. All he knew was that he had to get away. But as he couldn't see much, after finally getting on his feet and trying to make a run for it, he ended up running straight to some bushes and falling over.

Lisa had observed John's behavior, trying to determine what the man was trying to do, and why exactly he was making noises like those chicken she had once stolen from a farm had made just before she had snapped their necks.

Lisa wasn't sure what she was supposed to do in this situation. So she just stared the man, confused, and also worried he was not feeling well. After all, he had fainted before. If he was sick, how could she help?

After falling in the bush, John froze, certain this was it and that soon he would be ripped apart from limb to limb. When after a while nothing happened, he slowly turned around, deciding he at least wanted to see what was going to make him it's next meal. Now that he had gotten used to the dark, and calmed down he could see a humanoid figure standing few metres in front of him.

Maybe a minute or so, the two figures stared each other, both uncertain what the next step should be.
This moment was broken when Lisa sensed something. She turned to face the dark forest.

John, with his inferior human ears, didn't hear anything at first, but soon he too heard the sound he knew all too well.

They had been sensed by a pack of Cerberus, who had roamed the forest at the time of the explosion, and thus avoided it.

Lisa knew they were not a threat to her, but as she didn't want them to attack John, she prepared to defend him. She concetrated on the sounds and smells to locate the enemy. There were five of them. They were able to work together as a pack, and so had surrounded them. Lisa moved closer to John, a gesture which he misinterpreted as a decision to eat him before the dogs could, so he rose to his feet, and run for the tree close by, providing Lisa with the worst treeclimbing attempt she had ever witnessed.

As Lisa was wondering what exactly John was trying to do to that poor oak, the first of the mutated dogs attacked. It had identified John as the weaker one, so it leaped at him, only to crash to Lisa's arm in midflight and fall to the forest floor in a mess of broken bones.

The other four hesitated.
Unfortunately for them, The T-virus had enchanced their agression far more it had their intellect, so instead of doing the smart thing and running away as fast as they could, they launched an attack, trying to sink their teeth in Lisa's flesh.

After finishing them off, Lisa turned to John, who had given up on climbing, and was currently trying to dig himself a nest under the tree.

Realising the sound of battle had stopped, he turned around. The hunched figure was still there, staring at him. He wondered if it had really protected him. Tentatively, John took a step towards her, trying to asses the situation. He still had all of his limbs left, and this creature had not harmed him in any other way, either. Quite the opposite, John knew those dogs would have killed him in a second without her.

Without turning his back to her, John took a step back, then another.
Lisa followed.

John started to walk backwards, only to fell over again.

He got up, realising this was getting him nowhere. And this creature did not seem to threaten him. John wondered if this meant the rumors of Umbrella succeeding in developing B.O.W's who could be effectively used as soldiers were true.

He decided to try talking to her, hoping it could understand human language:
"Could you show me how to get to the Raccoon?"

No answer.

"The city, somewhere where there are other people?"

John was just coming to the conclusion talking was getting him nowhere, when Lisa turned around, and started walking.

She stopped, turning to look at John, who realised she wanted for him to follow.

Deciding he really had no other choice, he followed her to the darkness.

Author's Note:

The first chapter in my fanfic telling the story of Lisa Trevor after the Mansion incident. There is a possibility I'll make a comic version at some point.

I would like to continue this, telling what Lisa and John did during the RE2, and then RE3, but I have a problem, i have never actually played those games. I'm trying to find them, but until I do, I doubt I'll continue this, I do know what would happen in the second chapter, but without the game as a reference....

I know John's flashback does not fit with the official timeline. When I wrote this, I had only a vague idea of it. I'll rewrite that part or address that in the upcoming chapters. John will somehow survive the mansion! (But would he survive the Raccoon City outbreak, I wonder?)