This place was hell. With no windows to the outside world, Rembrandt felt trapped, isolated from reality. Minutes felt like hours, hours felt like days. Time itself seemed to bleed together. With no clocks or way to tell time he lost track of it a long time ago. He could only guess how much time passed since he first awoke here, the artificial lighting of his room remaining overly bright and beginning to cause him mild headaches.
He couldn't believe what the doctors were trying to tell him. Q-ball, Wade, and the Professor aren't real? Figments of his imagination, conjured up as hallucinations by his damaged brain? If that were true he would feel utterly lost without them. They became his family, and he didn't know how he would go on without any of them in his life.
Could his double be in this situation and they were swapped somehow? If only he could recall the events that happened after sliding. He found that as badly as he wanted to believe this was some sort of mix up, he couldn't explain how he saw his friends in the hallway before. The doctor didn't see them, nor did the guards. Q-ball and the others acted as if they weren't standing in an asylum. None of it made sense to him.
Turning to the door he saw someone watching him through the window. He leapt to his feet, recognizing Wade instantly. With a bright smile, he ran to the door, placing his hands on it as he leaned closer to her, wishing there wasn't a thick layer of metal and glass standing between them.
"Girl you have no idea how excited I am to see you! Do you have the key to open the door? I don't know when the guards will return to patrol this area" Rembrandt asked quickly, his smile shifting to a more serious look. For a brief moment he looked away from her, trying to see as far into the hall as he could, trying to watch her back.
"What are you talking about Remmy? There's no door here. Come on, or you're going to miss the slide" she replied, beginning to walk out of his viewing range, raising her hand to him as if she were beckoning him to follow.
"No, Wade! Come back!" he slammed on the door, cursing to himself as she walked out of view. Grabbing his head he turned away, pacing in the confined room as he struggled to prevent more panic from overworking his tired mind. Why did they keep leaving him? Why didn't they see they were in some hellish mental hospital?
He turned back sharply as he heard his door being unlocked, a brief moment of hope coming back to him, believing it was Wade opening the door. However a guard entered the room, gesturing for Rembrandt to follow, causing his previous smile to falter.
"Dr. Smith says you may spend some time in the recreational area, seeing as you are at least somewhat lucid now. Come along"
Rembrandt was quick to follow because it not only got him out of the room but because it also allowed him to get a lay of the land. If he could figure out the twists and turns of this hellish asylum then maybe he could find some sort of escape, granted his friends were unable to find him first. As the thought came to his mind so did the unwanted idea that they may not even exist, making him feel truly alone in this unfamiliar setting.
The walk to the recreational area was short, with a few winding hallways. They all looked the same, easy to get lost in if you didn't know the area well, turning or branching off in unnatural ways. Every hallway shared the bright, almost blinding artificial lighting, with no windows or sunlight present in any room thus far. The rec area was no exception, filled with several other humans who sat in various areas playing with children's toys. He even saw one sitting at a table, chewing on checkers pieces.
A brief look around the room revealed nothing that could offer any view of the outside world, such as pictures, magazines, or a television. The only things in the room were the guards, fellow prisoners, and himself. Sitting alone at a table he buried his face in his hands, unsure what he could possibly do now, wanting more than anything to see another color besides the bright, blinding white.
"Rembrandt"
He wanted to scream. Torn between joy and sorrow upon hearing the voice. Would he just vanish, like Wade did previously, or all three of them did when he first saw them?
"Q-ball?"
He lowered his hands, seeing Quinn sitting across from him, a nervous look on his face. He was wearing a guard's outfit, pulling something out of his pocket. Rembrandt recognized it immediately, his own eyes widening as Quinn slipped it onto the table.
"The Egyptian Timer? But how? We got rid of it after the professor came back with his more advanced model" Rembrandt whispered, looking between Quinn and the guard standing by the door.
"There isn't enough time to explain right now, Rembrandt, but you have to trust me. It wasn't easy getting in here, and we have to slide, now" Quinn replied, pointing to the timer.
Rembrandt's own eyes widened as he looked back to the timer, taking a closer look. He saw the timer only read ten seconds left until the next slide.
"But what about Wade and the professor?" Rembrandt was quick to ask.
"They will meet us using the professor's timer. We need to slide from here, you open the gateway while I distract the guard" Quinn replied, getting up and approaching the guard standing by the doorway. Rembrandt was quick to snatch the Egyptian timer, turning away from the guard and Quinn to open the vortex.
As he did, his body went cold. He looked down to the device in his hands, gripping it tighter as he saw it no longer resembled the Egyptian timer. Instead, he was holding a regular RCA NiteGlo Universal TV remote, no conversions or modifications present to even make it resemble the timer he and his friends used for a short time.
With horror he turned back to the guard, only to see Quinn was nowhere to be found. Tears began to form in his eyes as the guard looked over to him, smiling as he spotted the remote in his hands.
"Still playing with that broken remote Dr. Smith gave you last week? They never told me why they gave that to you, what do you do with it? Pretend you're watching MTV?"
The guard laughed to himself, turning away as if he didn't really expect a response. Rembrandt just dropped the remote, putting his hands to his head as he began to shake, the tears falling down his cheeks as the weight of recent events began to take a toll on him.
This couldn't be true, it couldn't be. Quinn, Wade, and the professor were real, they were real! Sliding was real! He wanted to scream it from the rooftops, let everyone know how much he believed in his small family. Yet as loudly as he tried to tell himself that he believed those words, his eyes wouldn't leave the previously discarded television remote sitting on the nearby floor.