After a few minutes of struggling, he managed to open his eyes.

Ulrich lay on the floor of…somewhere. He was just looking at a grey ceiling that seemed extremely far away. He tried moving his legs. They were wiggling a small bit, that was good. The room was pretty warm, so he'd probably get his energy back sooner or later. He kept moving his legs, tried moving the rest of his body. It took what felt like ten minutes or so, but he was up. He walked forward a few inches, trying to get rid of the pounding headache he suddenly got, when he ended up hitting his face against a long wood table. Now both sides of his face hurt like hell. But the fall did wake him up slightly and make his sight slightly less blurry.

Positives, positives.

He ran his hand across the metallic red wall, until he felt his hand slip slightly. This seemed like some kind of door. He felt the door, slightly less red than the wall, until he found what felt like a door handle.

Wouldn't budge.

Great, Ulrich thought. He tried saying the word, but it appeared his mouth didn't get the memo about being up and slightly ready. But his eyes were adjusting, and he was slowly getting a vision of his surroundings.

He looked up at the low ceiling, and then towards the walls. Right next to the door was a metal plate with a hand engraved on it. Presumably, it was some kind of fingerprint scanner, like something from a sci-fi movie. Ulrich was about to touch it, hesitating for a brief second. He scanned the room, and figured it was either touch the panel or starve waiting for someone to get here. For all he knew, he was in a doomsday bunker with suspiciously good furniture. And so, he touched the scanner.

And then the alarms started.

His sight was back. His hearing was back. He heard himself make some incoherent noise, so his mouth was back. He looked around for a hiding place. The table was wooden down to the floor, so he looked around it for some kind of switch, hoping to retract under the wood so he could hide or something. But there didn't seem to be anything like that, and so when the door opened, he was in the middle of the room.

What came into the room was a man in some kind of uniform, his black helmet obscuring his eyes, his bulky black armour covering his body, and also the doorway, alongside some kind of two handed gun.

"Who are you?"

"Uh, Ulrich Hart?" Ulrich blurted back.

"Age?"

"Eighteen?"

"Are you with the Novas?" the man screamed.

"The who?" Ulrich screamed. Shit, should've played along.

The man rushed at him, and Ulrich managed to jump out of the way, accidentally letting some fire out of his hand near his landing place.

Oh yeah, fire. He could use that.

His body seemed to recover enough, so he collected the heat in his left hand, and threw it at the man, who yelled something angrily as he moved out of the way. His helmet automatically covered the rest of his face, and Ulrich tried channelling the heat from his left hand, but before he could do anything, the mans gun was already bashed against his face. The last thing he felt being the table against his skull