Author's Note: This is an idea I came up with not to long ago. Basically it's about a character based off myself who's named Dr. Valeria Lector. She's writing a journal on her present life as a Resistance leader, and her past life in which she was a scientist who worked in the Lambda Complex of Sector F. The first two chapters will be published together, but from then on it will only be one chapter at a time. Also note that the first chapter is basically only about getting to know Val. This is my first fanfic so go easy on the reviews and no flaming please. Enjoy! :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Valve or anything else mentioned in this story.

The Diary of Dr. Valeria Lector

Entry 1, Recording Purposes

Ahh the sweet smell of burning dead flesh…I really do hope you were able to sense the sarcasm there. However I've gotten quite used to it all ever since the Black Mesa Incident. Good ol' Black Mesa. I still remember so many of the people there, some of which survived Black Mesa and the Seven Hour War…and some that didn't. I remember the day it all happened as well, but I'll get to all that sooner or later.

For recording purposes I'll tell a bit about myself. My name is Dr. Valeria Lector, you can call me Val. I grew up in Massachusetts and was what some might refer to as the 'pampered genius'. Being in school was always difficult. I was always known as the 'teacher's pet', but that's probably because of my straight A record. What teacher wouldn't love that? Anyway all up through high school I never really had any friends, but then again I was at least three years younger than most of them. Skipping grades made me feel good inside because I was so proud of myself. However that always made it harder for me to get along with classmates and my two siblings. Home life was always difficult, probably worse than school. I was always either fighting with my parents or my siblings. If it wasn't my siblings being jealous it was my parents upset in my interests. I spent so much time in my room building ingenious contraptions and studying subjects like calculus, physics, and mechanics. My parents were proud me, but wanted me to have more social interaction. Rather annoying to be honest, but that's life for ya. When I graduated high school, it was time for college. That started another argument with my parents. Where would I go to college? Would I stay in a dorm? So many questions led to so many arguments. Eventually my parents decided to send me to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and live in a dorm on campus.

Being away from my family was such a nice relief. No more yelling, no more arguments and no more immature siblings! Actually being in college was even better. The students there were extremely friendly and had no problems starting a two hour conversation on Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Of course there were those spoiled rich brats or the occasional stuck up genius but most people were pretty cool. One person that I was good friends with was Gordon Freeman, who was such a quiet but insanely smart man. He made a good study partner and to be honest I had a little crush on him heehee. But I kept my feelings secret because I was more concerned with my schooling.

Gordon and I graduated at about the same time. Gordon with his thesis paper titled: Observation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement on Supraquantum Structures by Induction through Nonlinear Transuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength (ELW) Pulse from Mode-Locked Source Array (whew!) and my thesis paper which I can't seem to recall the name. The only other thing I really remember about graduation was Professor Kliener's face. It was lit up like a Christmas tree; you could just see the sparkles of glee and pride in his eyes.

After that I kind of wondered around looking for a job that would hire someone as young as me in the field I wanted. Eventually I got a job at the local research facility that focused on physics. I was so disappointed there though, the research was incredibly dull and slow. It also made me upset that after all my education, I was using about 1/5 of what I had actually learned. Luckily since I had kept in contact with Professor Kleiner, he recommended me to Dr. Wallace Breen, the administrator at the Black Mesa Research Facility (which is actually located over a decommissioned ICBM launch silo by the way). It was just the chance I had been hoping for. When I finally got the call from the administrator I was relieved after the interview to hear I'd soon have the acceptance letters mailed to me. Bah wish I could write more but I think I hear that familiar sound of a zombie and not just those regular shambling ones either…

-Val

Author's Final Note: Hope you enjoyed this entry as much as I did writing it. Trust me when I say there are a lot more to come, for now though I need all the help and feeback I can get. So...please review!