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Lisa knows he’s there. She can smell him.
He is different from the others, the shambling, moaning humans-monsters-creatures-things that stagger from room to room, legs stiff and arms outstretched as they search and search and search, forever grasping with bony fingers at a satiation and satisfaction that does not exist, unaware in their mindlessness that there is nothing in the world capable of ending their hunger, that no matter how much they kill and eat and devour, they will always want more. They stink of rot and disease and sick, the stench of decay heavy around them like a perfume.
Being in their presence stirs something inside her and makes her lash out, chains and arms swinging and hitting and smashing until she is covered in warm blood and warm guts and warm brain and the decay is overpowered by a tangy, metallic odor that she finds preferable.
He carries that odor with him now. It clings to him, thick and heady, masking coffee and aftershave and musk and sweat and gunpowder. He smells vaguely like some of the ones she had come across earlier, the ones in the brightly colored vests, and reeks of the dark haired man who had hammered Lisa’s body with bullets and fire and pain, pain, pain.
He moves through the halls with measured strides, pacing himself. She can hear his footsteps loud and dull against the cold concrete floors, hear the rapid beating of his heart deep in his chest and the hiss of his breaths as he draws them in through his nose and lets them out through his mouth. Then, in short bursts of light, gunshots ring out and overpower everything else, miniature explosions bringing agony to her ears, and she cringes away, chains rattling as she falls into the wall and tries not to scream.
He hesitates, head tilting up, but then he is back on his way, stepping over the thing on the floor, its red limbs still twitching even in death. She follows, absorbed, eyes greedily taking in his colors, the warm yellow of his hair and the cool blue of his vest, the deep crimson splayed across his pale white skin in specks and patches and splotches.
Lisa can remember, distantly, many colors. She can remember a world full of them, each as vibrant as the next, blending together into a big, beautiful kaleidoscope of fractured images and memories and words. But all of those colors are all long gone now, vanished into her new reality composed of tones of grey, and all that is left to remind her is him, with his yellows and blues and reds.
She can remember when he wore white. Though for Lisa time has vanished into the space of one long, never ending moment, frozen and moving at the same time, nights blending into days until there is nothing, just her in a static world, she knows that he wore white then, and that this, where she currently is, is now.
Then was different. Her world was not yet grey, but painfully bright, blinding light reflected off of silver stainless steel and polished floors and the edges of razors and needles and shackles. She had always felt exposed in this overwhelming light, on display, especially when the other man came, the one called Will Yum, who always brought pain with him, incredible agony that made Lisa writhe and shriek and beg brokenly for Mother, who never came.
He had always been there, too, standing in the corner of the room, yellow hair bright in the light like a halo. His white coat hung down to his knees, swaying as he walked. Sometimes he talked to the other man, mouth moving in ways Lisa herself could no longer manage; other times he touched her, a cold gloved hand grasping her arm or leg or head as the other man gave her more pain.
His touches hurt, some of the time, when he gripped too hard or his nails dug in, occasionally drawing blood and bringing that sweet-sick reek of metal to the forefront over antiseptic and her own filth. But that was okay, because they never brought her any true agony, and there was a difference between that and mere pain, between the intentional suffering delivered by one and the roughness of the other.
Lisa wished, then, like she does now, that he would touch her more. She enjoys the sensation, the closeness, the humanity, because in the end, she is still a human. Once upon a time, in another life, she had talked and laughed and touched like he could, and there is nothing she wouldn’t give to be able to do it again. She wants to feel skin against skin, to absorb his warmth and his color and his life, to transform her tones of grey into something more. She wants him to touch her like he did the man, Chris Tuh Fer, all black and green and tan, who’d taken him between his legs and run his fingers through his hair and pressed his lips to his, bodies moving against each other against the side of Mother’s prison.
That’s why she can’t let him leave. Sirens are wailing and lights are bathing the grey world red, and he is there, all yellow and red and blue headed for the doors that will take him away from her forever.
She blocks his path.
“I believe your desire for death can be granted,” he says to her, and while she can’t decipher most of the words, she understands desire. She wants to tell him that all she desires is him, is touch, but all she can do is shriek as bullets rip into her one after another.
She doesn’t die, she never does, but as more and more lead gathers in her body, scalding paths deep into her, the pain becomes agony and then beyond that, into the realm of excruciating, like the worst of what the other man could offer. For a moment, the world goes black, and Lisa feels herself falling.
And a moment is all it takes. Metal creaks and then more pain explodes all over her body as she is cut into, pinned to the floor by something too heavy for her to lift.
She squirms and struggles, wails working their way out of her mouth.
Help me, she would’ve said, if she’d still known the words.
But Wesker does not help her.
“Be a good girl,” he says, “and stay dead this time.”
Then he is out the door and gone. Lisa stays locked in place, unable to move, and because time no longer exists for her, she does not know how long she remains that way, listening to the sirens and a distant female voice saying a sentence over and over and over in a loop.
—this facility will self destruct in five, four, three, two, one—
And then, all Lisa Trevor knows is white.