Tyrant

By Methinks

Chapter 1

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"Sure I'm not human anymore, but just look at the power I've gained!" - Albert Wesker

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Important Note: This is not a true crossover in that the Resident Evil story line has no bearing on this story's plot outside of providing the beginning inspiration. There are no Redfields, Valentines, or Weskers - just Harry and whatever friends he happens to drag along his way.

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He woke with a gasp, heart pounding a terrified staccato, a clammy, cold sweat pouring down his back. As he began breathing deeply to try and calm himself down, he stripped back the covers of his bed and swung his legs around the side so he could sit on the edge. He ran his fingers through his sweaty hair, cradling his head in his hands.

For as long as he could remember – which wasn't long at all – he had not once had a real dream, the kind normal people got with talking rabbits and fairies and rainbows and shit. The few hours of sleep he got each night were always either blank oblivion or filled with fevered nightmares of buried memories. Unfortunately, that night had been most definitely the latter.

The klaxon sound of the doorbell startles him out of his fitful rest. He doesn't know what time it is, no watch or clock with him in the cupboard, but he's relatively certain that the sun hasn't even risen yet. No doubt the fat man who owns the house – his Father? Uncle? Guardian? – will give the people at the door a piece of his mind. He doesn't like it when people bother him earlier than they have to.

Instead, the fat man comes pounding down the stairs in an eager rush, covering him with dust from the cupboard rafters, to open the door and greet the newcomers. He can't hear the conversation, the cupboard door muffles the sound, but he's soon dragged out to meet the men the fat man so courteously greeted.

There are two of them standing in the doorway. He's never seen these men before. Everything about them screams important, from their neatly pressed suits to the expensive radios they both have in their ears. He can see why the fat man is being so nice to them – he actually likes rich and powerful people.

"Is this the boy?" one asks.

"Yes," the fat man says shortly, not even the presence of the rich people able to keep him from sneering. "Wretched little thing, isn't he? You can see why we want to get rid of him."

"John?" He heard someone shuffling around the doorway to his room before a light clicked on revealing an older man in a well-worn bathrobe, pulling him out of his depressing reverie. "Everything alright in here?"

John nodded. "Yeah, just another flashback."

The man came and sat down next to him on the bed. "Which one was it this time?"

"The kidnapping one."

"Anything new?"

John shook his head. "No. I'm not even sure that one has anything left in it for me to remember. It's been the exact same the last twenty times I've had it."

The older man sighed. "We can always hope. If we could just get the names of the bastards that sold you, that'd be a tremendous help." He paused and checked his watch. "Well, looks like it's just about five. I doubt I'm going to be able to get back to sleep and I know you won't. Might as well go ahead and get the tests over with."

"Sure, Doc. Why not?" The teenager sighed. "Maybe this time we'll actually find something new. Unlike the last 43 times," he grumbled to himself.

The older man gave him a stern glare. "Not today please, John. You know why we need to do these blood tests. Those men had you for five years, we've only been doing this for a year and a half – I doubt we've barely even brushed the surface of all the experiments they performed on you."

John grimaced as a myriad of phantom memories assaulted him and looked away, his eyes landing on right arm, where the sleeve of the long shirt he'd worn to bed had ridden up to expose the serial number tattooed on the inside of his forearm: T-E0113-S042. The only link to a past John couldn't remember. Even the name he went by was simply an attempt at making light of his situation: John Doe.

He gave the neat black lettering a disgusted glare before pulling down his sleeve and standing up. "Fine, let's just get this over with."

As the Doc led the way through the refitted hunting cabin, deftly avoiding the mountains of unpacked cardboard boxes littering the hallways, John padded quietly behind. "I take it you finished setting up the lab last night?"

The Doc nodded. "And in record time too. I guess I've finally got the process down after our seventh move in as many months. I finished the final diagnostics while you still had your head stuck in that god-awful sudoku book of yours."

"Hey, don't go hating on the sudoku. Just cause you can't do it for the life of you doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to," snapped John back, slightly offended on behalf of his favorite puzzles.

The elder man snorted. "Right. Don't get me started on all the things you can't do. Need I remind you of the Crossword Puzzle Disaster of Barcelona?"

John's mouth snapped shut and he blushed furiously. Desperate for a change of subject, he latched onto the first thing that popped into his head as they turned the corner into the cabin's makeshift laboratory. "So, you aren't really expecting to find anything new today, are you?"

The Doc shrugged. "Not really. Your blood's been fairly stable ever since we discovered your fast healing last month." He sighed before continuing, cutting John off right as he was about to suggest skipping the tests, "That's not going to keep us from doing the tests though. We need to know what they did to you."

"I know..." groaned John as he hopped up onto the well-used lab table in the center of the room. "I just don't see what the big deal is. Everything we've found so far has been nothing but good. I'm stronger and faster than normal people. My senses are all improved and I don't have to sleep near as much and..."

"And you have a nearly insatiable appetite for barely cooked meat. That right there's cause for worry. What if you wake up one morning and decide you want some Doctor Edwin Matthews for breakfast?" The Doc chuckled as John shot him an incredulous look. "Yes, well, I might be exaggerating a bit on that one but the point still stands. Nobody gets something for nothing, John. Life just doesn't work that way. Sooner or later you're going to have to pay a price for all this and I intend for us to be ready when that time comes."

John sighed and rolled up his left sleeve and began clenching and releasing his fist to make it easier for the Doc to draw blood from his arm. "Yeah, yeah. Still doesn't mean I have to like it though."

The scientist ignored him and began going through the well-practiced motions of booting up the many lab computers. Finally prepared, he placed a bulky voice recorder on a nearby table and began his examination. "Date: September 23, 1996. Time: 0513 hours GMT..."

The younger male winced as the Doc began their usual ritual of drawing blood and running it through a number of expensive machines John was sure weren't standard issue for an ordinary doctor. From what little he understood of them, most merely tested his blood for a variety of infections or chemical imbalances, but apparently a few of them actually broke down his blood all the way to its base components to examine his DNA itself.

While the machines began their daily symphony of hums, whirrs, and beeps, John took the moment to examine their latest 'lab'. They'd just vacated a place in the middle of Portugal in favor of this small cabin in the mountains in the east of France. It wasn't much of a change. The house still had the bare minimum of luxuries, and they were still isolated away in the back-end of nowhere - though he had to admit the terrain here was far more beautiful than Portugal.

John sighed to himself again and began preparing himself for a long morning. They'd missed a week and a half of tests while moving and he had no doubts the Doc would insist on playing catch-up by running every test the various machines possibly could. He was right. He ended up having to sit still for a good three and a half hours while the Doctor poked and prodded him before letting him go. Also like he'd expected, none of the tests had revealed any new mutations or infections, and had only confirmed that his abnormally fast growth rate had continued unchecked.

It was because of that irregularity – and the amnesia – that they weren't sure of his exact age. But assuming his growth rate had remained constant, which was highly unlikely, and that he currently had the body type of an average nineteen year old male, which was only a rough estimate, than his actual age was likely somewhere around sixteen.

Their estimation of his time in captivity was even more shaky, their only reliable indicator being the level of education he had been able to recall when the Doc had first begun tutoring him – that and his apparent ability to fit inside a cupboard if his flashbacks were anything to go by. If they went off that, the fat man had sold him sometime around ten years old.

Which meant the kidnappers had stolen five years of his life from him, before he had somehow managed to escape from them and make his way to the Doc's doorstep in Racoon City, Colorado. Not a very pleasant concept to consider. There was a lot you could do to a person in five years, especially if you're immoral enough to be willing to purchase small children to use as human test subjects. More than anything, that was the reason he went along with Doc's research so placidly. Despite all his grumbling the Doc wasn't the only one who wanted to know just what had been done to him.

Finally satisfied nothing major had changed, the elder scientist released him and immediately began pouring over the minutiae in his data read-outs. John was quite familiar with the brush-off and merely stretched muscles stiff from having sat still for so long before heading to the kitchen to cook up their usual fare for breakfast. A simple meal of scrambled eggs and toast with a glass of orange juice for the Doc and a large variety of barely cooked hams, sausages, and bacon for himself.

He followed up his breakfast with his usual morning routine of school work. Although he had started with a five year handicap in his various subjects, his almost non-existent need for sleep, his natural intelligence, the Doc's skill as an educator, and the complete lack of anything else to do had already found him advancing into subjects a year ahead of where he was theoretically supposed to be. Even further in biology, thanks to the Doc's various rambling lectures during their morning tests. Both of them figured it was a rather appropriate atmosphere for the topic. Not to mention it gave them something to do while the machines cranked out their results.

All in all, it wasn't a bad life. The lack of outside companionship got somewhat lonely every now and then, but all together the two of them were content with each others' company. John was pretty sure the Doc was relishing having such an attentive student to teach – not to mention an an interesting, if potentially worrisome, test subject – and John was glad he'd had such a brilliant teacher to get him back on his feet.

After all, there weren't many people who'd be willing to take in some sort of lab rat escapee with absolutely no idea of what had been done to him and a severe case of amnesia. Much less, go on the run with said escapee in an effort to elude some invisible but ever-present enemy.

Though he supposed it was entirely possible his kidnappers weren't even chasing him. He could be perfectly safe right now. Maybe he'd killed whoever was experimenting on him before his escape from whatever lab they'd been holding him in, though he seriously doubted it. The idea of a weak, drug-filled, amnesiac somehow managing to kill a whole team of healthy scientists was just a little outside the realm of what he was willing to believe.

Still, it was a nice possibility to consider. Though by that token, he also had to entertain the idea that maybe they'd simply let him go and were just waiting for the right moment to take him back. Either way, unless he miraculously recovered his memory or it came up in one of his flashbacks, it was best to stay safe and just keep on running.

Outside of their morning testing, logging those flashbacks was the only other thing the Doctor absolutely required him to do. Even though he hadn't had a new one in months, every now and then he'd find some new snippet of information in one of the old ones and the Doc wanted to make sure they didn't miss a single piece of information. Each successive memory had the potential to reveal some new data about what had been done to him that could possibly lead to some sort of breakthrough in their research.

Though they'd learned little through his efforts so far. All they knew was that he was originally British, had been all but auctioned off to his captors by his guardian, and that the experiments they'd conducted on him had been incredibly immoral, excruciatingly painful, and more than a few times invasive and extremely gruesome. He could also vaguely remember a – friend? cellmate? – who'd looked like something straight out of a B-class horror flick. Seeing as he was pretty sure his captors had been responsible for the poor bastard's condition, it only made him that much more worried about what they'd been doing to him.

There was little he could do about by this point, though, except sit back and let the Doctor conduct his research. It didn't stop him from hoping, though, that they were just making much ado about nothing. He really didn't want to have to live the rest of his life with this hanging over his head.

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The rest of their first week in France had rapidly turned out just like the last three countries they'd lived in. The only trappings of civilization for miles around the cabin was a small town in a nearby valley – really little more than a gas station, a small general store, and a few other small businesses that serviced the surrounding area. Which, while suiting their purposes perfectly, did not present a whole lot extra for entertainment.

Not that it really would have mattered anyways. Other than their weekly jaunts down to the town in the Doc's beat-up SUV to stock up on groceries, they stayed sequestered in the lodge. John quickly fell back on a habit he'd developed back in Spain and began taking occasional nightly hikes through the nearby mountains whenever he didn't particularly feel like studying or sleeping.

He soon found himself taking at least a short hike every night. There was simply something inherently peaceful about the forest at night that he felt did even more to restore him than a simple night's sleep. Especially, he mused as he stepped out onto the porch and shut the cabin door behind him, on nights like this one, with the full moon resting high in the sky and bathing the landscape in a soft white glow. Nothing to bother him or remind him of his unfortunate past – just himself and the rock beneath his feet, the wind whispering against his skin, and the quiet chorus of the forest's night life serenading his ears.

It was nights like this one which made up the majority of his best memories.

Unfortunately, the peace he'd been hoping for that night seemed somehow determined to elude him. There was an uneasy feel to the night time wind and an unnatural quiet on the air that was setting him on edge. He'd barely been out for a quarter hour when he finally decided to cut his hike short and head back to the cabin for some sleep.

Suddenly, he heard the crashing of a large animal in the brush far off to his left and he whirled around, wondering why he hadn't caught wind of it before realizing he'd wandered upwind in his distraction. He cursed himself for his foolishness and quickened his pace to a jog. He wasn't too far away from the lodge and whatever was following him sounded big enough that the thick brush should slow it down enough for him to get indoors before it caught up with him. Hopefully.

However, almost as quickly as it had begun the crashing suddenly disappeared and after several seconds John slowed to a stop. Had whatever it was given up pursuit? Perhaps it had gotten a whiff of the lodge on the wind and had decided to leave off. He knew human habitations gave off a bit of a polluted scent which deterred most wildlife more often than not. He couldn't particularly blame them either. The smell even turned him off and he lived in one.

After nearly a minute of silence, he resumed his hike back to the cabin. Even if the thing had decided to leave him alone for now, he'd been headed back there anyways. Besides, there was no sense risking it changing it's mind and coming back after him.

Almost immediately, the crashing erupted again, this time directly to the side of him and much, much closer than before. John swore vehemently and broke into a run for the cabin. The creature hadn't broken off pursuit but had simply gone to ground, so to speak, and had been sneaking in closer while he'd been busy arguing with himself. And like an idiot, he'd been stupid enough to stop and play right along into it's trap.

After nearly a minute of running, he realized despite his best efforts the thing was slowly catching up. There was a small chance he could make it back to the lodge before it caught him, but he didn't feel like taking the risk. If it was persistent enough to keep after him all the way there, it could very well be persistent enough to barrel into the lodge right behind him. And gods knew the good Doctor would kill him if any of his precious equipment got damaged.

Besides, it wouldn't be the first time that he'd had to square off with a wild animal on one of his midnight jaunts. He was far stronger and quicker than any human this thing, whatever it was, had ever run into and he was quite well practiced with the hunting knife he had tucked into his boot. Perhaps, he thought with a grin, the Doc might appreciate finding a new wolf's skin rug in the morning. Bear's skin? Mountain lion, maybe?

Seeing a break in the trees ahead of him, John pushed himself and sprinted into the small clearing. There, he turned around and braced himself to face whatever it was that was coming after him. His heart hammered as the crashing grew rapidly louder and closer. However, when the thing finally emerged from the trees, it wasn't at all what he had expected. Or had ever even seen for that matter.

He supposed the best way to describe it was some sort of man-wolf. Apparently the werewolves in those B-class horror flicks the Doctor liked to watch actually had some foundation in truth – not that the incredibly rational man would ever believe him when he told him. He wondered briefly, as he eyed the vicious looking teeth in the thing's maw, if a werewolf's bite was actually infectious like in the stories. Perhaps he had finally bitten off more than he could chew.

All musings were quickly forgotten as it sprang at him with a snarl. The thing was fast but it wasn't outside his ability to handle. Drawing the seven inch hunting knife from his boot, he deftly ducked underneath its claws and swiped the blade across the thing's left side. He threw himself to the side as soon as he felt the knife catch, avoiding a swipe of its claws, and backed away to survey the damage his attack had caused.

It was a nasty gash but it didn't appear to have hit anything vital and the creature certainly didn't seem like it was going to let a little cut deter it from further violence. It came at him again and John attempted the same maneuver, this time feinting towards its left and then going to right. The thing had apparently anticipated the attack however and instead choose to simply ignore the knife and leap straight at him, using its superior weight to bear John to the ground.

Its plan succeeded marvelously and John hit the ground hard as several hundred pounds of snarling man-wolf drove straight into him. He forcefully resisted the urge to curl up as the impact drove all the air out of his lungs and instead drove his knife deep into the thing's side. The creature recoiled with an agonized howl, allowing John to catch his breath, but kept on top of him – its greater weight and strength pinning him firmly to the ground and putting him in range of its wicked looking teeth.

However, the thing had never come up against John before and never suspected his adrenaline enhanced strength was a match to its own. As it snapped at his throat, he abandoned his grip on the knife in its side to catch hold of its throat in his right hand and one of its claws in his left. An imperfect defense, as it left its right arm free reign to maul his side - which it promptly began to do, the sharp claws sending nauseating waves of agony through his body as it tore at his side - but he was more than willing to take a few scratches as opposed to risking its teeth. Infectious or not, he wasn't about to let that thing take a bite of him and with the amount of pressure he was currently putting on its windpipe, the thing would choke to death before too long.

He couldn't help but muse grimly that the Doc was going to get a kick out of dissecting this son of a bitch. Assuming he survived long enough to drag it back to him, that was.

It didn't take long for the creature to understand the danger it was in and it began scrabbling to get away from its uncooperative prey. Realizing it was trying to get away, and more than happy to maximize his short term survival chances by letting it do exactly that, John took advantage of the extra space between them to leverage his feet against its chest and toss it away from him with a massive push. The creature sailed quickly backwards before impacting a nearby tree with a painful sounding thump, but was back and up on its feet in a flash and had already disappeared into the brush by the time John came to his own feet.

He wasn't about to say no to a good idea and left for the lodge at a run, practice helping him put the pain firmly out of mind. Not only did he not trust the thing not to come back for a second round but he was also bleeding rather profusely from his injured side. Which would no doubt attract other troublesome predators to him, which was quite possibly the the last thing he needed at the moment. Retreat was by far the best option in his opinion.

At the pace he was moving, it took him only a few minutes to reach the lodge. Slipping quietly inside, he immediately went to the bathroom and tore off his shirt in order to check the full extent of the damage. As he gingerly probed at his side, he mused that all in all the encounter could have gone much worse. True, his right side was a bloody mess, but once he got it cleaned and bandaged up all but the worst should be entirely healed up when he got up in the morning. Thank heavens for speed healing.

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When he woke up the next morning, it was immediately obvious something had gone wrong. His right side felt on fire and was very obviously inflamed. He felt extraordinarily weak, his limbs sluggish and heavy as if they'd been weighted down with lead, and judging from the descriptions in his biology books, he was fairly certain he had both a fever and nausea, two ailments he couldn't remember ever having experiencing before. They weren't pleasant.

"Doc!" he yelled, appalled by how weak his voice sounded. "Could use a little help in here!"

The doctor rushed into the room moments later, toothbrush hanging limply from his mouth. While momentary relief flickered throughout his features when he saw his charge, the relief quickly gave way to worry when he noticed just what kind of state his charge was in. "What the hell happened to you?"

John quirked a weak grin. "Got attacked by a werewolf last night."

Doc frowned disapprovingly at him. "That's not funny John. I need to know what happened."

"I'm not lying." John responded, all joviality gone. "If the thing wasn't a werewolf than it was damn near similar. Either way, it got me pretty nice before I drove it off." He gestured to the crimson stained bandages that now lay on the bed exposing his side. "And something seems to have infected a number of the scratches."

Doc still looked disbelieving, but decided to ignore the topic in favor of the more immediate concern of treating him. He bent over to sling one John's arm over his shoulder and helped the invalid to his feet. "Alright," he said around his toothbrush. "Let's get you to the lab and get you checked out."

With Doc's help, John managed to hobble his way down the hall and into the lab, his side burning with every step he took. Collapsing onto his table, he couldn't help a scowl of disgust at his condition. He couldn't remember ever feeling this weak before – it was a feeling he was rapidly growing to despise.

So it was with even fewer protests than usual that he submitted to the Doctor's less than tender administrations. The elder man quickly took several samples of blood, both directly from the wound on his right side and from the arteries in his left arm, and immediately began running them through his machines.

While they worked on the samples, he began to address the inflamed wounds on John's injured side. Cleaning them once more, he proceeded to treat them with one of his various salve before binding them even more securely than John had last night. Then he dug around through his a large medicinal cabinet and came up with a small syringe and a pair of pills for John to take. Doc administered whatever was in the syringe to his side as he swallowed the pills. He ignored the man's admonitions to take them with water until a glass of the stuff was forced on him. Then, feeling uncommonly tired, he collapsed back on the table and closed his eyes in an attempt to get some sleep as the Doctor worked on the blood samples.

He wasn't sure how long he floated in and out of a fevered sleep before the Doc's voice woke him up. Still too tired and weak to bother with moving, though much of his early lethargy had disappeared, he simply laid there on the table and listened to the Doc muse aloud into his voice recorder.

"Interesting, most interesting. It seems like the virus is actively destroying the foreign bacteria in order to protect itself. I don't recall Lisa's strain ever behaving like that." There was a burst of typing as the Doctor began to look at something on his computer. "No, her virus simply mutated to incorporate each additional infection. This is definitely something entirely new. It's almost as if the virus has completely replaced his normal immune system."

He ignored the rest of the Doc's rambling and instead focused on the the name tickling at the edges of his hazy memory. Lisa... For some reason it seemed especially important to his fevered mind. Where had he heard that name before?

He's lying on a hard metal floor. He doesn't know where he is. He can't even remember his own name... there's simply too much pain.

He opens his eyes but can't see. He remembers now they'd taken away his glasses when they threw him in the cage. And now it's dark and cold and he can't see and he hurts so much and...

A voice sounds in the darkness. "Hello, little one. Don't worry, I'm here for you. I'm Lisa..."

Lisa, he breathed silently. T-E0001-S001. The horror flick cellmate from his flashbacks.

His mind was rapidly inundated with memory after memory as he was suddenly able to picture her in all her grotesque detail. They'd hadn't actually been cellmates, but had instead been caged next to each other like animals in some lab. She'd been responsible for keeping him sane during those first few months of testing, before the constant drugs and experiments had put him past feeling.

"Lisa?" he croaks. "You awake, Lis?"

He hears a scraping sound in the cage next to him. "Little one? Are you..."

He tries to answer but instead goes into a fit of coughing, misting the stainless steel floor with a fine sheen of blood. He hears Lisa move closer. "I'm okay. It'll pass. The fits were much worse an hour ago." He collapses weakly against the bars of his cage. "How much longer do you have?"

He leans into the slick tentacles that slide between the bars to gently stroke his hair. He could vaguely remember a time when he recoiled at their unnatural touch but now he just accepts them as part of Lisa. Besides, he's in too much pain to care anyways."Not much," she rasps. "They put me on some new drugs but the pain's already starting to come back."

He sighs. "Figures. They gave me..." Another coughing fit interrupts him. "They gave me something new too. I'll probably slip under before too long anyways. It would have been nice to finish your fairytale today. You know, the one about Hansel and Gretel."

"Little One, we finished that a week ago..."

His mind flashed through more memories, the fever making them as painfully vivid as if he was living through them all over again. He remembered lying shackled to a lab table next to her as their tormentors put them through excruciatingly painful tests, watching helplessly as their drugs callously mutated her further and further. Every day she became less and less human and all he could was sit by and watch as his one and only friend was tormented into insanity.

She screams, a horrible, agonizing sound that pushes through the anesthesia and brings him back to their personal, sterile hell.

"Lisa!" he shouts. He tries to look over at her but his head is painfully clamped in a vice, his arms and legs shackled to the lab table. "Lisa! Leave her alone! I'll kill you! Lisa! I swear to god I'll kill you if you touch her!

"Lisa!"

He began shuddering from anger as the emotions from the memory swarmed over him, before a single shocking realization struck him. Just how did Matthews know that name?

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Author's Note:

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Published: 04.02.10

Updated: