It was the blackest of black nights in that universe the Sliders had gone into this time. Quinn couldn't even see his hands in front of him, and thought at first that he had gone blind. Maybe it was a side effect from sliding?

Claustrophobia began to set in now. Breathing quickly and shallowly, the young grad student felt as if four walls were closing in around him. He wanted to push them away, but he couldn't touch them. Stumbling backwards, hyperventilating in panic, Quinn Mallory stumbled over a tree root and fell on his back into a pool of water. The sudden coldness broke the spell, and Quinn got a hold of himself, regulated his breathing, and asked hoarsely, "Wade? Rembrandt? Professor?"

"Quinn?" came back a scared little voice that was hardly recognizable as the spunky, bob-haired girl Quinn knew best from his childhood days and his time working with her in an LA computer store, "I-is that you? I – I can't see anything."

"It's okay, Wade," said Quinn, reaching out in the direction of the voice, relieved to hear that it wasn't just him who couldn't see, "Just take deep breaths. Keep talking – I want to find you."

"Okay…" Wade complied uneasily, her voice shaky and unsteady. Claustrophobia was probably hitting her hard, too. "I'm talking… talking… talking… Quinn, have you found me yet?"

"No," Quinn replied, a little smile crossing his face at the childish question. She would have known, had he found her already. "I'm getting close though. Keep on." Quinn began moving forward, sweeping his arm from side to side as he did so as to make sure he didn't just pass her by.

"Okay, um," Wade seemed to be trying to decide on a subject, "Why do you think we can't see anything?"

"It might be the universe we're in," Quinn replied with another sweep of his right hand, "Maybe it's nighttime here."

"Yeah?" Wade challenged softly, "Then where's the moon and stars?"

"I don't know," Quinn frowned. Puzzled, he looked up to the sky, or what he thought was the sky. There was no sign of any light, "Where's the Professor and Rembrandt?"

"Over here!" came the voice of the black soul singer, "Where ever here is…"

"Ow!" snapped a deep, British voice, "That was my foot, Mr. Brown!"

"Sorry."

Quinn chuckled softly at the common bickering of the two "adults" of the foursome. At times, it seemed to Quinn that he was the only sane person in the gang, although without doubt Wade had had those moments herself, too.

Suddenly, Wade let out a scream as Quinn caught something solid and warm in his hands. "Quinn, by god, that'd better be you!" she warned him viciously. Another hand, a small, manicured one, grabbed his wrist.

"It is," she breathed, "Oh, thank God. Professor, Rembrandt, are you okay?"

"Yes, we're fine, save the fact that neither of us can see three inches in front our face," Professor Maximillian Arturo replied crabbily. The studied and published physicist had a tendency to be grumpy anyway, but the absolute darkness was certainly not helping his temperament.

"Relax, professor," Quinn advised calmly, reaching into his right jacket pocket to withdraw a strange, funny little device which had a dial that was counting down. Glancing at the timer, he continued, "We only have about thirty seconds left."

"Wait a minute," Wade said, "If the darkness is blocking the moon and stars, what if it blocks the vortex and we miss the slide?"

Quinn refused to consider the possibility that they might end up spending the next twenty-nine years of their lives in a world of such utter blackness. "That's not going to happen," he said resolutely, giving Wade's hand a reassuring squeeze, "Ten more seconds."

"How can you be sure?" Wade protested. Quinn pointedly ignored her. He'd heard of what could happen if Humans spent too much time in the dark. Madness would set in, then starvation. At least Quinn knew there was a puddle of water somewhere around here.

"Five seconds… four… three… two…"

As the timer hit zero, Quinn Mallory activated the clever yet troublesome invention that had brought them here. A stream of thin blue, thankfully visible light jetted out of the end of the device and focused on a spot about seven feet in front of them, forming what looked to be a hole in space itself.

Everyone gave a sigh of relief and, one by one, jumped into the vortex and slid to the next world just as fast as they could.

~*^X^*~

Quinn knew immediately that something had gone wrong with the slide when he couldn't hear the Professor or Rembrandt in the vortex. Typically they yelled a bit more than him or Wade, but this time they were being awfully quiet.

Suddenly, the vortex opened up and Quinn went flying into atmosphere and landed beside Wade on a grated metal ramp. Wade gave a small shriek of alarm, and Quinn's momentum caused him to summersault all the way to the bottom.

Standing up and turning around to look at where he was, the first thing Quinn noticed was that he was nose to nose with an M-16. At the butt end of it was a scowling dark face with military headwear and scar on his left cheek.

Wade's voice came from behind him.

"Quinn…?"