It was snowing when they arrived in the air above Vienna, the weather and darkness making it all but impossible to see what was immediately before the DeLorean. Doc switched the headlights on in a hurry and caught a quick glimpse of the train ahead before a gust of snowy wind obliterated it from view.
"Damn," he muttered.
"Where are we?" Marty asked next to him.
"I'm assuming we're somewhere above Vienna," Doc answered. "Though I don't know where, exactly. Outside of the more populated limits, I would guess." He sighed, leaning close to the windshield. "I hate having the headlights on, now -- it gives Doc B a perfect target, and can attract too much attention from the ground -- but I'd hate even more damaging the time machine because we hit something."
"So let's hurry up and land, then," Marty said. "I'm still not over that seasickness, and I don't think being in a flying car right now is gonna help."
Doc glanced a moment at Marty, saw he indeed still looked rather green, and then looked back out the window, struggling to distinguish what was under them. "All right," he said after a moment, taking the car down a few feet. "We're over some woods. I'll land in the next clearing."
"Okay." Marty was quiet a moment, leaning back in the seat with his eyes closed. Then, without warning, he asked, "Did you have family here?"
"It's possible," Doc said as he carefully guided the DeLorean through the air, fighting a wicked northern wind. "My father's family came to America from Germany, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that I have blood ties here. Why?"
"Well, maybe Doc B's here because of his family -- like maybe he wants to off one of his ancestors."
The possibility was disquieting and now that it had been brought up, it nagged at Doc. "I don't think he'd stoop to that level," he said after turning it around in his head a bit. "I could entertain this possibility if he was in an entirely separate parallel dimension, where killing, say, a grandfather might prevent me from existing. But if our histories are similar, we could very well be in his history, now, and killing an ancestor could kill himself. Anyway," he concluded, "he'd be foolish to do that in order to dispose of me. Clara, Jules, and Verne would fade out, as well as the time machine he's in, and he would be trapped in a rather unpleasant paradox."
"Oh," Marty said, around a yawn.
"Offhand, I can't think of anything significant that went on at this location on this particular date. But history can be altered in tremendous ways by doing the smallest things. So far -- with the exception of Socrates -- all the people who have been targeted to die or not have been insignificant people in our history."
"Great -- yet another fun puzzle to solve. Can you stop fishtailing around so much? It's really not helping."
Doc tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "It's the wind," he said. "We've been lucky so far -- we just happened into the knight."
"Yeah -- lucky. And who says we'll keep it up?"
"My, but we're pessimistic right now," Doc said lightly.
Marty snorted softly. "I'm sick and tired -- everything looks pretty crummy, then."
Doc noticed a gap in the trees below and guided the time machine in that direction. "We can land there," he said. As they drew over the small clearing and the car began to lower itself, he was startled by a sudden rush of wind, causing the DeLorean to shake to and fro, and a roar from directly above. He and Marty leaned forward and looked up, through the windshield, seeing the undercarriage of the train rocket forward, past them."
"Was he following us this time?" Marty asked, frowning as the machine was lost, once more, in the snow.
"I don't know," Doc said. "Either that or he just happened to pass over us." He frowned a moment, thinking, then shrugged it off and finished landing the car.
"So what are we gonna do, now?" Marty asked as the inventor shut off the car.
"Find the town," Doc said immediately. "I thought I saw some lights about a half mile back; I suspect that was civilization."
Marty remained in the car as Doc opened his door and got out. "Uh.... Doc? I hope you have a coat for me 'cause I'm not going outside like this! I don't even have long sleeves!"
"Right," Doc said, nodding once. He popped the hood and dug through the stack of odds and ends he had tossed in prior to leaving home, separating a couple coats from the stack -- both his size. He brought them back into the car, tossing one to Marty. "Here. It's probably a little big, but it's wool and you won't need to trip over the hem. Just roll the cuffs back."
Marty glanced at the black peacoat for a moment. "Okay," he said. "I guess that'll work." He opened the door and stepped into the chill wind and falling flakes, slipping it on as Doc put on the other coat -- a black trenchcoat. It wasn't quite as warm as the pea coat, but he figured it might be better if he was the one who was cold rather than Marty at this point. The teen's complaints were getting on his nerves a little more each time.
"Hey, Doc?" Marty's voice floated over a moment later. "Uh, is it normal to be kinda dizzy after getting off a ship?"
"Yes," Doc said immediately. "Don't worry, that should pass. Does the coat help?"
Marty walked around the front of the car, staggering a bit. "Yeah," he said, pausing to roll back the cuffs a few inches. "It helps. But I hope we don't have to be outside a long time."
"Hopefully we won't," Doc said. "Did you want to grab a snack before I shut the trunk?"
The teen shuddered visibly. "Give me a few hours," he said. "I think I'd just get sick again if I ate now."
"All right."
Doc double-checked that he had the car keys and the beeper in hand, locked the vehicle up tight, then they set out on their hike, crashing through wild brush until Marty stumbled across a well worn path where several inches of snow was the worst obstacle.
"You think Doc B is really going into town?" he asked, doubtful.
"There's little else to go on at this point. If we can't track him down there, we can always return to the DeLorean and wait things out there."
"I wish," Doc heard Marty mutter under his breath. "What's in Austria, now, anyway? Besides all this cold weather?"
"I don't know, Marty. We can assume that Doc B has his reasons for being here, though."
Several minutes later, Doc heard the crackling of underbrush nearby. He turned to look at Marty, a half dozen steps behind, put a finger to his lips, and held up his hand for him to stop. Marty halted a step later, looking at him quizzically. The sound came again from the left, closer. Footsteps, Doc was all but certain.
"Someone's coming!" he hissed. The words had hardly left his lips when he saw the vague outline of Doc B pass by though the tree branches, about fifteen feet away. His other self didn't appear to see them, however, his gaze straight ahead and an eerily blank expression on his face. Doc held his breath and held as still as he was able until Doc B had moved out of both audible and visible range.
"I don't think he saw us," Doc finally breathed.
"Aren't we gonna follow him?" Marty whispered.
"Of course... but quietly. Far enough behind that we can detect him only by sound or motion. And if he pauses, we do the same."
Ten minutes after they had first begun tracking Doc B, the woods thinned out, then disappeared altogether, replaced by what looked to be buildings and streets. Doc stopped short of the treeline, waiting until Doc B had slipped from view behind a building before allowing them to continue.
"Is this Vienna?" Marty asked softly.
"Undoubtedly," the inventor replied. "I suppose we can close the distance a little more, now."
But Doc found that simultaneously trying to stay far enough behind Doc B so that he wouldn't spot them while staying close enough so he wouldn't be lost was rather tricky. There weren't very many people out on the streets -- a situation that might be related to either the cold, snowy weather or perhaps the darkness -- but the buildings provided ample shadows to duck into should Doc B look behind him.
Oddly, though, he did not. Doc found that amazingly arrogant of him, considering he more or less knew that he was being followed. It made him uneasy and he wondered, for the first time, if maybe they were being led into a trap.
When Doc B stopped, it was before a large building, elegant in appearance. He paused before the double doors, checked a watch on his wrist, then pulled the door open and stepped inside. Piano music spilled out of the door with lamplight, a tune that was terribly familiar.
Marty pounced on it at once. "I know that music," he said as they paused outside the building. "It's... it's...." He stopped, frustration filling his features. "I know it, but it's not coming right now...."
"I recognize it, too. Beethoven, isn't it?"
"Yes!" Marty said immediately. "It's 'Für Elise!' I had to learn that damned tune when my mom made my brother and sister and me take piano as kids. I hated it."
Doc recalled where they were, the time, and smiled, faintly. "Perhaps you can tell that to him." He nodded towards the doors. "I suspect that the composer might be in there playing."
Marty's eyes widened a little. "Neat," was his opinion. "Let's check it out."
Doc cracked open the door and peered inside. He was looking into an elegant lobby, currently empty, beyond which beaconed more doors. The scientist caught a quick glimpse of Doc B slipping into them, then opened the door wider and gestured for Marty to follow. The time travelers crossed the marbled floor and reached the other doors, Doc again taking a moment to pull the door open just a smidge to see what was on the other side. It appeared to be a concert hall of sorts, filled with elegantly dressed men and women, seated in chairs facing a stage containing a single man and a piano. A flicker of movement close to the front caught his eye and he saw Doc B taking a seat on the aisle, his attention directed toward the front of the auditorium.
"Doc B's near the front," he said. "We'll sit at the back and watch him."
"Great. I hope it's a little warmer in there."
The scientist opened the door wider and stepped inside the rather cavernous room, illuminated by oil lamps rigged to the walls. He quickly scanned the rows of seats, searching for an empty pair. It took him a couple tries -- the place was well filled -- but he finally spotted two near the back, flush up against a support pillar. He pointed them out to Marty, then they crept quietly over to the seats without stirring too much attention from the patrons they had to slip past.
"Do you think Doc B is going to try and kill Beethoven?" Marty whispered once they were seated.
Doc shrugged. "It's possible," he allowed. "We--"
"Shhhhh!" came the admonishment from the rather large woman on Doc's left, scowling at the time travelers. "I've come a distance to be here this evening for the music, not for your words!" she said with a German accent.
Doc nodded once, managing a wanly polite smile. Marty rolled his eyes at the woman's remark and settled back in his seat while Doc shifted his eyes and attention to the white shock of hair close to the front that belonged to Doc B.
Beethoven concluded the song and was rewarded by applause. He waited for it to fade before launching into another piece. Marty, once more, recognized it after a couple notes.
"The Moonlight Sonata," he murmured, yawning into his hand. "Kinda slow and haunting...."
Doc grunted, hardly hearing him, too intent on Doc B. As he kept his eye on him, Doc's mind drifted back to the conversation he'd had with his friend on the ship right after Marty had had a face to face meeting with his double. There was something about that talk that he didn't like. Maybe it was just that Marty had been so vague about the topics covered, particularly about the health and well being of Doc's family in the mad scientist's hands. He sighed softly, slipping a quick glance at his watch, still set on the local time in 1986. It told him that it was 1:19 P.M. on Monday, June 30, 1986. It had been almost twelve hours since they had started this journey -- but it seemed like days. He shuddered to think how long Clara and the boys had suffered in Doc B's hands.
The scientist frowned without being aware of it as he studied his counterpart's head. What was he going to do next, here? Was he going to stand up and shoot Beethoven? Muck up history by taking a hostage? And, come to think of it, where was the other Doc B? Elsewhere in the room, perhaps in disguise? Doc removed his eyes from his counterpart and darted them about the room quickly, but saw nothing.
He turned to Marty. He found his friend settled back in the chair with his arms folded tightly across his chest -- and his head bowed so far down that his chin was nearly touching the coat. Doc touched him lightly on the shoulder, but when that didn't provoke an immediate response, he shook Marty once, hard. The teen shot awake, dazed.
"Huh?"
"Do you see Doc B anywhere?"
Marty frowned at the question, clearly annoyed. "Isn't he still up front?"
"I mean the other Doc B -- the one who was here first. Look around carefully and tell me if you see anything."
Marty groaned softly but did as Doc asked. "I don't see him," he said after a moment. "But I swear I'm starting to see double 'cause I'm so tired...."
"Shhhhh!" the large woman ordered again, her eyes narrowed in a glare. "I shall fetch an usher if you're not quiet," she warned.
Doc bit back the urge to say something rather impolite and sarcastic to her, managed another bland smile, then returned his attention to his counterpart, nervously drumming his fingers on the armrest between himself and Marty. The melody Beethoven was working through seemed to go on and on, winding Doc up tighter and tighter with tension. The music seemed to have the opposite effect on Marty; when Doc glanced at him again, Marty was half curled up in his seat, resting his head against the back of the chair, and snoring faintly. His reaction to the music was provoking disapproving looks and scowls from the surrounding audience members, so Doc elbowed him awake. The look that crossed Marty's face when he opened his eyes saw the inventor frowning at him told the scientist he was treading on incredibly thin ice, right now.
"What?" Marty all but snapped, the word uttered loud enough to cause more than a few heads to turn.
Doc leaned close to his friend's ear, blushing for the both of them under the annoyed looks from the people near them. "I realize you're tired, but this isn't the time or place to sleep. It's incredibly disrespectful to the performer, and we have to be alert and ready to move at a moment's notice."
"Fine," Marty hissed. "Then give me the keys."
"Why?"
"So I can go back to the car and sleep. This music is worse than a lullaby, Doc. Unless we're planning to leave in the next minute, I'm not gonna be able to stay awake! I'm dead on my feet, here!"
"Shhhhh!" the large woman snapped out again.
"Shut up!" both Doc and Marty shot back at her, simultaneously. She blinked at them a moment, surprised, then drew her lips back in a snarl and rose to her feet. Doc realized his time in the auditorium might be limited.
"Fine," he said, giving in, not without a little anger. "Here are the keys -- go back there and sleep if you want to do that. I suppose I can deal with Doc B alone, if rest is that important to you -- but I don't think it'll be very wise to sleep in the cold car."
"I'll find blankets, then," Marty said, snatching the key's from Doc's hand and slipping them into the pocket of his borrowed coat. He got to his feet without another word, slipped quickly past grumpy patrons, and headed for the exit. Doc turned back to his counterpart after he left, thankful that Doc B was exactly where he had last been spotted -- and wondering what, if anything, was going to happen next.
* * *
Marty scowled to himself as he headed back into the woods, headed for the car, doing his best to ignore the snow still drifting to the ground, albeit at a lighter pace than earlier. He didn't understand why Doc was so against the idea of him catching a nap in there -- and, jeez, it wasn't like he was trying to sleep on purpose, but between the music and the dim light and the stuffiness of the room, keeping his eyes open had just been impossible. If Doc wasn't going to give them a chance to rest -- not even an hour -- then how could he possibly get ticked over something like that?
Chill, McFly, he's got his own problems, now,
Marty told himself, taking a deep breath of the crisp air as he walked. But he couldn't help feeling a little annoyed, especially stumbling around dark, snowy woods, dead exhausted."Doc B better hurry up and do whatever he came here to do," Marty muttered aloud as he shoved a snowy tree limb aside. It was a struggle not to trip over the roots and rocks strewn on the path, considering they were all but hidden under a neat covering of snowflakes. The snow wasn't all bad, though; it gave off a kind of eerie luminescent glow, magnifying any bit of light a millionfold.
But how was he going to get back to the DeLorean? He had no idea where he was!
"Okay, wait," Marty said aloud, stopping. He squinted at the ground as he thought out the problem. The outlines of footprints were clearly visible, and things snapped into place for him. If he wanted to get back to the DeLorean, he should just follow the footprints! Marty smiled at his deductive skills and forged onward, keeping his eyes trained to the ground, carefully.
The walk seemed to take a while. Longer than he remembered it taking with Doc. The snow tapered off. A bitter wind started to gust, provoking Marty to turn up the collar of his jacket and stuff his hands deep into the pockets. Finally, at long last, he noticed things lightening up ahead, a sign of the clearing. He sighed in relief and picked up his pace, looking forward to burrowing down in the car and finally, at long last, getting some sleep--
The smile on his face faded as he emerged from the woods. He blinked, wondering if he was hallucinating the sight before him. When it remained, a half-smile replaced the one he'd lost and he brought his wrist up to his mouth.
"Hey, Doc? Come in. This is kinda important...."
There was a pause, then a low whisper. "What is it?"
"Well, I think I took a wrong turn going back to the DeLorean."
"Are you lost?" There was a heavy sigh. "Marty--"
"No, not really. It's just... I found the train, Doc."
There was a pause. Then: "Great Scott!"
* * *
Doc couldn't help but stand at the news Marty had relayed to him. Fortunately, his timing was impeccable, coming just as Beethoven finished the sonata and the audience as a whole stood to applaud him. Unfortunately, the noise made it almost impossible to hear Marty's next words, even with the output device directly in his ear. The inventor shielded that ear as much as he could with his hand, asking Marty to repeat what he had said.
"Did you want me to get them out of the time machine?"
"Can you?"
"I dunno... I haven't gotten close enough to see in, yet."
Doc's response was immediate. "Check it out. If you can get them out, do that and take them back to the DeLorean."
"Okay. Is Doc B still there?"
"Last I saw he was...." Doc's voice trailed off as he scanned the room, particularly where he had last noticed Doc B. The mad scientist was no longer there. "Damn! He must've just left."
"No problem," Marty said. "I'll have them out of here by then, even if he's heading straight back. Do you want me to do something to the train that'll keep it here?"
"Let me think about that a little, first. I seem to recall a method of disabling it that can be done but won't be too hard to repair. Meantime, I'll see if I can find him before he does something history will regret.... But contact me when you know more about my family."
"Roger, Doc."
Clara Brown opened her eyes at the sound from outside -- a sound like branches or brush crunching from footsteps or something moving about in them. She frowned as she strained her ears, but when the sound didn't return, she sighed, dismissed it as a wild animal or perhaps her overstressed imagination, and closed her eyes once more. But, although she was exhausted and worn beyond belief both physically and emotionally, sleep wasn't coming.
Perhaps it was due to the anger boiling in her veins, directed one hundred percent at the man who looked like her husband, but was so very definitely not so. Clara knew in her very marrow that Non-Emmett, as she had come to think of him, was without a drop of the things that made her husband the man he was. Non-Emmett had no compulsions against beating people, whereas her Emmett had never raised a hand to anyone before -- unless he felt that his or his family's safety was being threatened in some manner. Non-Emmett growled, snapped, berated, and threatened; her Emmett was too mature and intelligent to allow his temper to control him, preferring logic and reason to prevail in the end. Non-Emmett had assembled enough guns and weaponry to take on a small army; her Emmett felt that, although there were times and places where having a firearm was safe, if not required, matters between people were better settled without them.
And worse than all that put together, the one thing that made Non-Emmett's behavior utterly unforgivable in Clara's eyes, was the way in which he treated Jules and Verne. She could bear being used as a hostage, having a gun pressed to her head, being slapped when something was not going the way Non-Emmett had wanted or hoped. But it tore her heart in two to see Jules and Verne experience similar treatment at the hands of a man who looked so much like their father. She feared that the scars inside from this would take a great deal longer to fade than those marked on the skin.
"Mom?" Verne's voice whispered tentatively from her right, where he huddled against her. She and the boys were seated on the floor, with nothing more than a couple blankets Non-Emmett had found to keep them warm in their summer clothes in the below-freezing air. Having Jules and Verne close on each side -- a move suggested by her under the excuse that they might be warmer this way and readily accepted by her children -- brought Clara a small measure of emotional comfort. They had been terribly, terribly quiet since leaving home, however long ago it had been. Verne's question was a welcome interruption.
"Yes, honey?"
It was odd, Clara mused. If she had used that term with him just yesterday, before the madness began, he would've immediately complained about being called such a "babyish thing." Now, the endearment was accepted without a word. Things had changed -- a lot and possibly forever -- in the last day.
"I thought I heard somethin' outside. Is he coming back?"
"Probably," was Jules' flat and pessimistic reply. "He always comes back. I wish he'd just get himself killed!"
"Jules!" Clara admonished softly, disturbed to hear such talk from her ten-year-old.
"You wish that too, Mother," Jules replied. "If you didn't, I'd worry about your sanity."
Clara bit her lip rather than agree or lie. "He's not your father," she reminded them once more, the words almost a chant, now. "Remember that."
"We know, Mom," Verne said, rather calmly. "He's a Pod Person -- I saw it on TV once. Aliens that look like people but aren't."
"He's not a Pod Person, Verne," Jules said witheringly. "He's... something else."
"Yeah -- an alien."
Jules rolled his eyes, the expression visible even in the near total darkness of the train. "Mother, tell Verne how foolish that is."
Clara sighed to herself, partially relieved to hear the boys arguing, as it was such a normal sort of thing, and partially because of the way she was -- quite literally -- caught in the middle. "We shouldn't dismiss any ideas, Jules," she said quietly. "Even I don't know what this thing is, let alone where it's come from."
Non-Emmett had told them little about anything. From the very moment she'd first seen him, she should have known something was amiss. Emmett wouldn't've needed to knock at the front door as this thing had. And when the knock had come, Einstein had immediately started to growl, deep in the back of his throat. But she hadn't thought anything of it until she had opened the door and had seen the dark muzzle of a gun pointed at her. She hadn't felt afraid then -- simply very, very confused. Was it a joke? And, if so, why?
Those thoughts had fled when Non-Emmett had stepped into the house, shut the door, grabbed a stunned Clara, and demanded to know where his "twin" was. Einstein had immediately sunk his teeth around the ankle of his non-master and Non-Emmett had swung his leg, hard, into the side of the wall. The blow had knocked Einie off, and the dog let out a heart-wrenching squeal of pain, letting go and slinking away. The sound of the struggle with Einstein, his demanded question, and the subsequent smack he had delivered to Clara's face when she had stammered out that she didn't understand his question, had attracted the boys from elsewhere in the house. When they'd seen someone who appeared to be their father shaking their mother, hard, by the shoulders, the boys had reacted as any kids might: they'd run straight for their apparent father and had yelled at him to let their mother go.
Non-Emmett had turned at the sound of the boyish shouts, seen the kids coming, and, without any hesitation, had aimed the gun at them. They'd stopped dead, wide eyed. Verne had asked if it was real. Non-Emmett had snapped that if he said one more word, he would get to find out. The expression of hurt, terror, and confusion on the face of her youngest had made Clara's blood boil -- and she'd begun to feel afraid for the first time.
He had repeated his question about the whereabouts of "his other self." Clara, threatened with a gun and not wanting to traumatize her sons even more than they already were, had told him that Emmett had gone into the future -- she wasn't sure of the exact date -- to have some maintenance done on the DeLorean. At this news, Non-Emmett's eyes widened, and he demanded to see the time machine. Misinterpreting his question, Clara had asked if he meant the train, and his eyes had grown wider still. He'd grabbed Clara, tightly, around the neck, the gun pressed to her skin, and had ordered her to show him where it was -- with the boys to follow, as well.
Once led to the train, Non-Emmett had made them climb aboard, pulled sets of handcuffs and ankle cuffs from a leather backpack he'd brought with him, and had secured his prisoners tightly. Clara knew very little about the workings of the train -- back in January, her Emmett had taught her how to work it should there be an emergency -- but it was enough for Non-Emmett's purposes. Thus had begun their nightmarish journey through different times. Although Clara supposed she and the boys were spending more time alone than with Non-Emmett, as he left to do whatever he had come to do, the time they did see him was far more than enough.
"But Dad's gonna rescue us from the Pod, right?" Verne asked, interrupting his mother's quiet contemplation.
"I would place a bet on that," Clara said. Until she had seen Emmett and Marty and the DeLorean on what had seemed to her to be the second stop, she had been terrified that she and the boys would be lost to him forever. He would find them missing in 1986, have no idea where to begin looking, and they would end up killed -- or worse -- by his mad "twin." She supposed she shouldn't have underestimated him. She wasn't sure what he was planning to do, but she was confident that when this terrible ordeal finally reached an end, they would be back with the real Emmett Brown.
Clara hoped it was soon, though. Lord, she did.
"Mother?" Jules whispered. "I hear something outside, too. He is coming back."
Clara frowned, tensing up without being aware of it. Her body ached from the bruises that Non-Emmett had so generously given her. After a moment, she heard a faint crunch, like that of feet on snow, from the outside, followed almost immediately by a very large clang of something -- or someone -- bumping into the side of the train. The sound and the vibration echoed briefly in their small prison.
"Shit!" a voice hissed from outside, sounding genuinely annoyed. Clara frowned at the exclamation, more out of puzzlement than disapproval for the language. It didn't sound like Non-Emmett. The boys picked up on that, too. Jules started to stand, perhaps to look out the window, but Clara pulled him back down, her protection instincts greater than her curiosity.
"I don't think it's him," Jules whispered, explaining.
"Even if it's not, it could be someone worse," Clara answered back in her own whisper.
"Who could be worse?" Verne muttered under his breath.
Something knocked against the glass. Jules and Verne screamed briefly at the sound, Clara almost following them. Her heart thudded firmly against her ribs as her eyes darted to the panes of glass across from them, where the noise had come from.
"Clara?" Her name was called very softly. "Clara, are you in there? It's me, Marty McFly."
Clara blinked, stunned by the words, then she smiled tentatively. "Marty?" she repeated hopefully.
"Yeah! I'm here to get you out of there."
"Oh, thank God," Clara murmured, half to herself, feeling dizzy with relief. The nightmare was almost over!
* * *
Doc had spent almost ten minutes carefully navigating the performance hall, searching for Doc B. The alternate version of him, however, seemed to have vanished into thin air, leading the inventor to conclude that Doc B had likely left around the time Marty had called about finding the train. Almost positive that he wasn't anywhere in the building, Doc wasted little time in leaving and radioing his friend. Marty, however, beat him to it.
"I'm looking at your family now, Doc."
"How are they?"
"Alive. Pretty much unhurt. Scared, that's for sure."
"Let me talk to Clara."
"I can't -- that's the thing. I can see them, but I can't get to them, now. The door's locked and so are the windows, and their hands and ankles are cuffed. Can I break one of the windows?"
Doc thought about that a moment as he hurried in the direction from which he recalled arriving. "That will cause a real disaster if Doc B tries to attempt a temporal jump with a structurally unsound pane of glass -- or one that's entirely missing. But it could also keep him here for a while to repair it. Do it."
"Okay, let me find something to break it with.... Where's Doc B now?"
Doc winced a little at that question. "He got away," he said. "I've aborted following him and am returning to the DeLorean, now. He's probably heading your way now, Marty. Hurry."
"Count on it, Doc. Over and out."
Doc frowned as Marty cut his transmission, suddenly mighty uneasy. How long had it taken them to hike to the music hall? Damned if he had any idea. His perspective of time was distorted beyond belief now, having popped in and out of so many different places for fairly brief spans, at different times of day. He was concerning himself over nothing, he told himself. Doc B had been gone less than twenty minutes, almost definitely, and it had taken at least that long to get into town from the woods... hadn't it?
"He'll make it," Doc said softly, his voice steady and calm, determined not to dwell on the what if; what if Doc B returned during the rescue attempt? What would he do to Marty -- and to the other Browns? Doc shuddered at the very idea, stubbornly pushing it from his mind. He had other things to worry over, rather than something that wouldn't happen. Better to take things as they came on this hell of a journey.
* * *
Marty reported to Clara the instructions Doc had given him. "Doc said to break the window," he called as softly as he could to ensure that the sound would carry through the glass.
Clara nodded from where she had half hopped, half shuffled to sit on the bench, off the floor. Jules and Verne crowded in close to her, their faces shining with hope at getting away from the prison they were confined in. "It will take a strong blow by something heavy," she said, her voice muffled by the window. "Emmett took great care in locating strong glass that could withstand the effects of time travel."
"So, would a rock or a branch be better?"
"A strong rock, perhaps, unless you can find a thick, sturdy branch."
"Okay. Hang on."
Marty ran over to the treeline, plunging his bare hands into the accumulated snow and brushing it aside as fast as he could. The icy dampness bit into his skin but he ignored it, wanting to get out of the area as soon as possible before Doc B returned. He didn't much like the idea of Doc having lost track of him.
After digging for a minute, Marty saw a lot of thin branches and dead leaves, but no rocks. Damn. He yanked up those as quickly as he could, ignoring the spreading numbness in his hands -- and then, finally, uncovered a rock. He grabbed it, almost dropped it, then turned around and started to cross the two dozen or so feet to the train.
He had gone little more than six steps when he slammed to a halt. Next to the train's door stood Doc B, a gun aimed at Marty. The man's face was oddly blank as he stared at Marty, his mouth twisted down a bit on the side.
"Drop the rock, McFly," the mad scientist ordered.
Marty let it go, holding his hands up, palms facing Doc B, to show him he was unarmed. Would he care? Probably not. His mind whirled and his heart started to skip, hard. Doc B's mouth curved in a faint smile as he approached Marty, the gun still held out steadily before him, aimed at the teen's chest.
"Thought you could outsmart me, eh?" Doc B said as he walked. "Ever occur to you that you're exactly where I want you, now?"
"What are you talking about?" Marty asked.
Doc B rolled his eyes. "I know you and my twin are following me," he said. "I don't know how -- that would require far too much of my precious time to find out -- but I'm not a fool, McFly."
Marty still didn't get it. He started to take a step back, away from the ever-closer Doc B, but the mad scientist adjusted his grip on the gun. "Move an inch, and that'll be the last move you make," he said, casually.
Marty froze. His eyes darted to the window of the train, where he could see Clara watching the confrontation anxiously. "I still don't know what you're talking about," he said.
Doc B snorted softly. "Simply put, if I can't stop you from following me, then why should I only visit times I need to? That would be rather... boring, I think."
The eighteen-year-old finally caught on. "You came here for no reason?"
Doc B smirked. "I don't think it was for no reason," he said. "I got to see part of a concert by Beethoven. And you're here, now, aren't you? I'll admit that this was an added bonus -- I thought for sure I'd finally get to have a nice conversation with the other me. Regardless, now it's time for me to show you -- and my twin -- why you should never ever underestimate me. And why some things are best left alone."
Marty's eyes widened. Doc B stood less than a foot from him, now, the muzzle of the gun perhaps an inch from his chest -- his very vulnerable chest. He knew what was going to come next -- and if he wanted to stop it, he had to act now, fast. Without thinking about it, he brought his knee up, hard, and caught Doc B right between the legs. The mad scientist gasped at the blow, utterly unprepared, and, although he didn't drop the gun, his arms fell to his sides so that the muzzle of the weapon was aimed at the ground.
"Never underestimate me and Doc, either," he said quickly before turning to run for the relative safety and darkness of the woods. He had gone just a step before the sounds came -- a terrible, terrible noise like firecrackers popping and snapping that Marty knew was really gunshots. Terror gave him a burst of adrenalin, which in turn propelled him faster than he thought was possible towards the trees. Bursts of snow scattered through the air as bullets struck the ground. A foot from the tree line, he felt something small and hard -- like a thrown rock -- strike his left shoulder, enough to jerk his entire body and cause him to almost stumble in his steps. He hardly noticed or gave it thought, wanting nothing more than to get away and aware of nothing but the sounds of the gunshots and his own racing heart.
The shots continued even after he had plunged into the woods and continued to run, half blinded by the shadows. He tripped more than once, over invisible branches and rocks, picking up bruises all over, but he gave it little thought, wanting nothing more than to get away, run, and pray that Doc B stumbled over something and broke his neck in the woods.
Marty wasn't sure how far he'd gone before he realized that the gunshots had stopped. He slowed from his sprint, panting so hard that his entire body shook, and tried to listen past his own gasps for air and his thundering pulse for any sign that he was being followed. A thick sort of silence was the only thing to be heard. Marty leaned back against one of the trees and closed his eyes, trying to catch his breath and slow his skipping heart. There was an odd, dull sort of ache deep in his left shoulder -- he must've banged it into a tree or a branch without noticing in his frantic fleeing. Without thinking about it, he reached over with his right hand to rub the bruise -- and gasped with pain.
"Damn!" he hissed, confused by the sudden hot agony that had wakened there. He opened his eyes and looked at his hand -- and that was when he saw the blood smeared across his palm. Marty stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment, genuinely confused, before realization dawned on him. With it, the ache in his shoulder shot up another notch.
"Oh, Jesus Christ," he whispered, his eyes huge. "I've been shot!"
His surroundings started to tilt and waver as Marty heard a sort of roar in his ears. He moaned, leaning over, feeling dangerously close to puking or fainting. Calm down, McFly! he told himself firmly, even as he trembled where he stood. Stay calm and get back to Doc. If you lose it out here, you're dead.
Marty forced himself to take deep breaths, then had to make himself stop when he started to hyperventilate. Whimpering to himself, he managed to lift up his left wrist to his mouth and called out for Doc. The scientist responded a moment later.
"Did you free them?" he asked.
"N--no. I didn't have a chance. Doc B came back!"
"Oh, God," Doc's voice crackled. "Did he hurt them?"
"I dunno... But he hurt me, Doc! I'm shot." Marty moaned out the words.
"Great Scott!" The exclamation came mingled with horror and disbelief. "Are you sure?"
Marty sniffed, tears filling his eyes from both the pain and the cold stark fear. "If it's not, then I'm bleeding a hell of a lot from just clipping a branch. Oh, God, Doc, it hurts like a mother!"
"Where were you hit?"
"My left shoulder. Doc, what do I do? I don't know where I am!" Marty's voice rose shrilly as panic threatened to overtake him again. His surroundings wavered once more, and he forced himself to take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Take a deep breath and let it out," Doc said, a second later. Marty smiled without much humor at the timing of his advice. "Is there anything around you that appears familiar?"
"No. I was in so much of a hurry to get away from Doc B that I -- ow! Oh, Jesus, Doc, this is really starting to hurt...."
"All right. See if you can find a gap in the trees. I'm going to take the DeLorean and try to find you."
"Hurry," Marty urged. He leaned back against the tree a moment, took a couple breaths, then stepped forward on shaky legs. A gap in the trees -- that didn't sound too hard.
Marty found, however, that either his sense of time had been knocked way off, or losing blood was making things harder than it should've been. He half-stumbled, half-staggered through the woods, moaning to himself, the pain in his left shoulder getting worse -- and creeping to include his neck, upper chest, and entire left arm -- until it felt like his shoulder was literally on fire. He could feel the blood dripping down his arm inside the sleeve of the coat, and the sensation made him more queasy than he had felt while on the ship. Had he had anything in his stomach, he was all but certain he would've lost it. Although it was below freezing outside and he felt deeply chilled, perspiration had gathered on his face, and every biting wind that snaked by made his skin number and number. He wasn't even aware of the silent tears slipping down his cheeks, brought on by the pain.
When he did find a gap of sorts in the trees, he wasn't sure what to do next. He tried to raise his left wrist to his mouth to call Doc, but less than an inch into the mission, it was all he could do not to faint. "Doc," he tried to call, loudly, but his voice sounded pitifully weak to his ears. Although he wanted to lie down now -- he felt oddly sleepy and numb, despite the fear and adrenalin still pumping through his system -- he made himself stand in the middle of the tree gap where a pool of moonlight was illuminating the spot like a stage light.
"Marty," Doc called a few minutes later. "Are you still with me?"
Marty bowed his head and leaned as close as he could to the microphone on his left wrist. "Yeah, but I can hardly move my arm now," he called. "And I'm feeling really woozy, Doc."
"All right. I can still hear you. Are you in a clearing of any kind?"
"Sort of." Marty paused, closing his eyes and swaying where he stood. "Would it be bad if I... sat down?"
"Try to stay on your feet, for now. If you pass out in this cold, in your state, you might not wake up."
"Uh-huh." Marty pried his eyes open, staring at the ground. A small puddle of his blood, dripping from the tips of his fingers, was gathering near his sneakers. His stomach gave a lazy roll at the sight. "Hurry, Doc," he pleaded.
"I'm doing my best. Just concentrate on the sound of my voice, okay? You don't have to talk back to me right now." A pause. "I've got the DeLorean headlights on and am moving really slowly over the tops of the trees."
"Did Doc B leave, yet?" Marty had to ask, managing to catch his balance after tilting precariously to the right.
"A few minutes ago. His next destination is on June 11, 1849, at eight P.M. in a place called Tumbleweed, California. Sounds to me like it's smack in the middle of the gold rush era. We're not going there immediately, of course."
"Of course," Marty mumbled aloud, half to himself. He heard the roar of an engine then, and managed to look up and see the bottom lights of the DeLorean pass overhead. "Doc, you just passed me," he told the inventor.
"Did I? Excellent. I'm turning around now and I'll be on the ground in a minute."
Marty sighed, feeling only slightly relieved. It wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot.
* * *
Doc carefully landed the DeLorean in the space where Marty waited. The clearance was miserable -- he took out a couple innocent branches attempting to land -- but it couldn't be helped. The moment he saw Marty, he knew they had little time to spare.
"All right," he said, hopping out of the car and amazed at how calm his voice sounded; inside he felt as shaky as Marty looked. "Let's see what we've got."
"Let me sit down, first," Marty pleaded, his skin unnaturally pale in the moonlit snow.
Doc nodded his agreement and quickly tossed one of the sheets they'd used as temporary Greek costumes over the passenger seat, to prevent any blood from soaking into the leather. Marty sat down carefully on the edge of the seat, his legs still hanging out from the car, and allowed Doc to take a flashlight and shine it in the wounded area.
What the bright glow revealed wasn't pretty or encouraging. The left shoulder of the coat Doc had loaned Marty was soaked with blood. The liquid covered the teen's left hand in messy streaks. Marty glanced at the illuminated sight and came dangerously close to fainting; his eyes started to roll back and his already pale complexion went even whiter. Doc grabbed him by his uninjured shoulder and shook him once, hard.
"Marty!" he called, loudly and forcefully. "Stay with me, now. I need you to stay awake for me, okay?"
Marty groaned in response. "I'm never gonna play guitar again...." he half mumbled, the words slurring together.
Doc shook him hard again. "Of course you are. Lean against the back of the seat and take some deep breaths, okay? I need you to stay awake, now, all right?"
Marty sucked in a breath of air, managed to nod, and leaned to the right, resting his head against the seat. Doc carefully examined the injury as best he could without touching the teen, but that told him very little. Gently, he took Marty's right wrist and felt for a pulse. It was skipping fast but weak. Doc had no idea how much blood his friend had lost and knew he had very little time before Marty would pass out, or go into shock. He was probably already halfway there with the latter.
"Marty," Doc said, turning away from the wound to look his friend in the face. Marty watched him through half closed eyes. "I'm going to need to take the coat off and get a better look at the injury so I can put a bandage on it. It might hurt a little."
"Then don't do it," Marty murmured.
"I think it might be better to know what we're dealing with and put at least a temporary solution on it before we leave." Doc paused, then added gently, "We're going to have to go into the future, and Lord knows what it might be like, there."
Marty understood. "Doc B's world."
"It's the only way. Medical treatments now and prior to this time are worse than better, and I'm not going to risk it with you."
"Just don't let me die," Marty whispered, wincing suddenly from his injury. "And hurry, do what you gotta!"
Doc did just that. He straightened up, ran around to the other side of the car, popped the trunk, hauled out the first aid kit, and brought it back to the passenger side of the car. Marty turned his face away from Doc and the scientist pulled out a clean towel from the kit. "I'm going to slide the coat off your shoulder, now," he warned softly. "Brace yourself."
Marty's head bobbed once. Doc took hold of the left lapel and started to pull it up, over the shoulder. The teen moaned deeply at the move, his body tensing up immediately. "Shhhhh," Doc murmured, his eyes on Marty's shoulder. Slowly, the fabric shifted back, revealing a larger, darker stain on Marty's clothes from the blood. Doc took his other hand, the one with the towel, and dabbed away some of the blood. He made a face without thinking about it, feeling faintly ill and beyond glad that he had selected physics instead of medicine while in college.
A couple minutes later, he had managed to remove the coat from Marty's entire shoulder. His friend was gasping hard for air by then, his face streaked with tears of pain, but still conscious. Doc mopped up some of the blood as gently as he could -- and found the entrance wound in the back of Marty's shoulder. It was small and neat, a clean hit. The bullet, Doc saw with a mixture of relief and dread, had then exited out the front of his shoulder, not as neatly as going in. Most of the bleeding seemed to be coming from that end of things.
"Okay," he said softly. "It's not so bad. I think it looks worse than it is."
"Just do what you gotta," Marty muttered through clenched teeth.
Doc took a couple gauze pads and pressed them hard against the wound in the front, then used both his other hand and his teeth to rip off a length of tape and secure the gauze there. He did the same to the entry wound, then wrapped a clean hand towel around Marty's shoulder for good measure.
"All right," he said, wiping his bloody hands off on a washcloth that had been in with the kit. "That should slow the bleeding down a little. Let's get the hell out of here."
Marty nodded once, slowly, drawing his feet into the car and turning around to face the front. By the time Doc had shut his door, collected the kit, shut the hood of the car, and got back into the driver's seat, Marty had started to fade out again. Doc shook him once more, harder this time.
"Come on, Marty. Keep your eyes open, all right? I know it's gotta be hard."
"Thirsty..." Marty whispered, his head lolling against the headrest.
Doc frowned, uncertain if he should be drinking liquids, then realized a solution that might work. He got back out of the car quickly, scooped up a hand full of untouched snow from the ground, then brought it back into the car. Marty seemed too weak or too groggy to take it from Doc, so the scientist held it up to his mouth and told him to take a mouthful and suck on it. The teen followed the order as Doc quickly programmed in a destination time. Not wanting to take Marty to the hospital if it could at all be avoided, since gunshots were required by law to be reported to local authorities and that would create all manner of problems, he settled on a date far enough into the future so that he could almost certainly treat his friend himself with easily bought supplies.
"Where're we goin'?" Marty murmured at the sound of the time being entered, his eyes closed.
"Midnight on June thirtieth, 2020, in Hill Valley," Doc replied. "Sit tight, we'll get you taken care of real soon."
He started the car and took it slowly above the trees, then headed off for the uncertain future.
Having been to distant, future times in Hill Valley before, Doc had a faint idea of what to expect in 2020, though he hadn't actually stopped in that particular year before. It was both a shock and a disappointment when he found things looked rather different, now.
There were skyways, he saw immediately, but they were in a sorry state of disrepair; a number of floating lane markers were missing or out. Few vehicles were out at this hour, but the ones he did see were rather run down in appearance. Below, lights were scattered widely, offering him no real idea of what to expect on the ground.
"Things changed," he muttered aloud. "But at least there're still people around..."
He took the first exit he came across, not entirely sure where he was heading. A pharmacy, first, to pick up supplies. Then, perhaps, a hotel room for their stay here, however long it might be. He didn't want to stay here a moment longer than necessary, but Doc was also determined to not leave too soon, before Marty had a chance to recover from blood loss and being in danger of infection -- or worse.
The wind was strong; the car rocked unsteadily as he fought against it to get the vehicle to the ground. In the distance, he could see clouds stacked up, heading in the same direction the wind was gusting. From that, he gathered a storm was coming toward Hill Valley and would probably hit within the hour.
The DeLorean had a bumpy landing as it touched the street; the road was in terrible condition, filled with potholes and cracks. A queer feeling of deja vu set in, one that he definitely didn't like. If he hadn't spotted obvious signs of life around town already, he would've wondered if he was in that terrible Nuclear Winter world that had been created when Marty had saved the life of one of Jennifer's ancestors.
Thinking of that, he looked over at Marty to see how he was doing. The teen was still conscious, though it looked like his hold on it was tenuous, at best. "We'll be there soon," Doc said with as much assurance as he could.
"Then what?" Marty murmured, looking over at Doc with an effort.
"Then I'll get you fixed up. Don't worry, Marty."
"Okay," the teen whispered, trying to smile. And, with that, his eyes fell closed and he went limp, relaxing deeply into the seat. Doc called his name a few times, loudly, and when that provoked no response he reached over and checked his pulse. It was still there, thank God, but it was weaker than before.
"Damn, he's losing too much blood," Doc hissed, more concerned than ever. He turned the flying circuits back on and accelerated sharply, ignorant of the speed limit. The headlights illuminated a nearly empty street before him, trash blowing everywhere.
In 1986 Doc recalled that there had been a Walgreens on JFK Drive, within walking distance of his former home. He headed that way, fast, and found that, although the name had changed, the business in the building was still a drug store -- and one with bars on the windows and more than one cop posted at the door. Odd. He settled the DeLorean in a parking spot near the back of the lot, not wanting anyone to peek into the car and see Marty, then left his unconscious friend with reluctance. He took a quick glance at his clothes as he got out of the car, checking to make sure they weren't streaked with blood or anything of that nature. Save for a few drops here and there, they weren't. Nevertheless, Doc buttoned up his coat, not wanting his apparently-dated clothes to cause any unwanted double-takes.
As he stepped into the drugstore, Doc headed straight for the first aid aisle, searching for things he thought he might need. Luck was with him; in the past thirty-four years, there had been a number of medical advancements made for self-treatment. The scientist collected gauze, bandages, disinfectant, some over-the-counter antibiotic pills and powder, the strongest non-prescription painkillers he could find, a type of device that would seal "even the worst and deepest cut, without scars," and a laser that would allow him to cauterize the wound to stop it from bleeding. About the only thing he really wished the store had, but they didn't, was blood for a transfusion and maybe an IV bag of fluids. He found some bottles of water and juice instead.
Collecting the goods took him perhaps fifteen minutes, and ringing them up was a self-serve process. Doc paid cash for his purchases, despite the rather obnoxious surcharge for cash, not wanting to take the risk of finding out that Doc B had either an outstanding warrant for arrest, or no money left to his name. On his way out of the store, he caught a glimpse of a rack for the Hill Valley Telegraph and bought himself a copy, curious to discover more about this future once he had Marty out of immediate danger.
With that task completed, Doc went in search of a motel. Although he was all but positive there had been a Holiday Inn and a Motel 6 clustered near the highway off JFK in 1986, they weren't there, now. In fact, as Doc headed closer to downtown Hill Valley and the courthouse square, he didn't pass one single motel or hotel. Those he remembered as being in business in his present were closed and abandoned, torn down, or turned into "hourly rate" brothels or dance houses.
Finally, two blocks away from the courthouse square, Doc pulled into a gas station and hurried over to a phone booth, doing his best to ignore the time ticking by. The wind had picked up even more, bringing with it the smell of rain and a number of unpleasant odors. As Doc stepped into the booth, lightning flashed over the western hills, followed by a low rumble of thunder a moment later. The phone had been replaced by a flat screen -- a video phone -- and the inventor immediately summoned information and requested a list of motels and hotels in the Hill Valley area. There was only one, it turned out, and when he saw the name of it, Doc blanched, coming perilously close to fainting.
"Great Scott!" he breathed as he gripped the sides of the booth for support, not believing his eyes. "It can't be!"
But it was. The only motel or hotel in the entire city was Tannen's Pleasure Paradise! They were in that reality, again -- at a later point in the continuum. Which meant....
"Doc B is the me who was committed," Doc whispered aloud, rocked by the revelation. "Great Scott!"
The repercussions of this were too fantastic to think about right now. Numbed by what he had learned, Doc returned to the DeLorean, shifted it into hover mode, and pointed it in the direction of the Pleasure Paradise. He circled around the hotel, eyeing it and the courthouse square for a long moment, debating the wisdom of staying there.
The square was looking even worse than it had the last time they had been there, thirty-five years ago, from this time's perspective. Bonfires and stacks of burning tires were blazing brightly, and the courthouse square was scattered with people. Most appeared to be bikers and showgirls, all clad in various leathers and multicolored metals. The businesses that surrounded the square were all variations on strip clubs, gun stores, and bars, all dilapidated and sleazy-looking. The only building in the entire square that looked well-maintained was the Pleasure Paradise -- and, oddly, Biff's name and face were off the sign. Doc wondered if Biff was still living, now, and, if not, who ran his empire? Had he still fathered his son, Cliff, in 1964?
This is probably the absolute last place Marty and I should be right now,
Doc thought with a frown. But unless we rent a house or apartment -- or look up Marty's other self or family -- we can't get around it. Just like Biff to have a monopoly on a thing like a hotel in this town...Finally, reaching a conclusion he didn't particularly like, Doc took the DeLorean through the toxic pollution clouds to the roof of the Pleasure Paradise and landed the car behind rusted and noisy roof equipment, pulling it under a little awning that protected the machinery. With the rapidly approaching thunderstorm, he wanted to spend very little time up on the thirtieth story of the building. He'd had enough brushes with lightning to last him several lifetimes.
After he shut off the DeLorean, Doc sat silently for a moment, too aware of the howling winds, the rumbles of thunder coming closer, and Marty's ragged, unnatural breathing. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, rapidly cobbling together a plan of action, then opened the door and stepped outside into the whipping wind. It took him a minute to locate the door that led from the roof, and five more to return to the car, find some lock-picking tools, and pry it open. Doc opened it a crack, peered cautiously inside, and saw a seemingly empty stairway. Excellent.
By the time he returned to the car, the first fat drops of rain were starting to fall. Doc quickly opened the trunk again and dug through the collection of things inside, finally finding what he wanted near the bottom and a little crushed -- an old safari-style bucket hat in khaki fabric. He stuffed his white hair under it and pulled it down low over his forehead, hoping that his improvised disguise would be enough, just in case. Next, he found the suitcase of various money he'd put together around the time he had completed this DeLorean and selected almost all of those dated 2014 -- the last year that the U.S. Government had readily manufactured physical forms of money.
Now armed with money and a disguise, Doc shut the trunk and returned, briefly, to the cab of the DeLorean, mostly to escape the increasing fury of the rain. He checked on Marty, now leaning heavily against the passenger door, his face turned away from the scientist, towards the window. Doc took his pulse again, observed that there was little change, then leaned behind the seats and found a wool blanket that had been kicking around back there. Well aware of the importance of keeping one who was in shock warm, Doc covered Marty with it up to his chin, then reluctantly left the car.
The distance between the roof door and the DeLorean was perhaps twenty feet. Doc jogged across the gap, but even so, he was soaked well through by the time he got inside. And not a moment too soon, as far as he was concerned; the thunder and lightning was growing in intensity, getting too close for comfort. He frankly wasn't looking forward to moving Marty, when the time came.
Pushing that from his thoughts, he carefully went down the stairs, several flights, before stepping into one of the interior hallways of the Pleasure Paradise. At some point, perhaps the last time they'd been in this kind of reality in 1985, Marty had mentioned to him that his mother and Biff had lived in the twenty-seventh floor penthouse. If Tannens still occupied that floor, he didn't care to run into them.
Doc carefully checked out the hallway before stepping into it. Thankfully, it was empty. He made a beeline to the elevators at the midway point in the corridor, noting the rather shabby and run down appearance of the hotel. The gaudy black and gold wallpaper was peeling around the edges. The burgundy rug was faded and bore more than one stain. The glitz and glitter that had been present in 1985 was sorely in need of replacement, now. It made Doc wonder what had happened in the past thirty-four years.
It took several presses of the call button before the elevator was summoned and arrived at the floor. A big, bearded fellow -- one of the bikers he had spotted below, Doc guessed -- was inside, a giggling woman under each arm. They gave the dripping, bedraggled scientist a weird look as they left the car and headed down the corridor.
Doc quickly stepped inside the now-empty elevator and pressed the lobby button. The doors closed and the elevator started to descend, creaking and groaning as it did. It reached the first floor without pause, thank God, and the doors opened to reveal what appeared to be the main business of the hotel, directly opposite the elevators: a casino with the latest technology, packed tightly with customers. Scantily-clad women -- revealing much more flesh than Doc could believe was legal -- wove in and out between the mostly male clientele, selling drinks and what the scientist suspected were illegal -- or here, perhaps, legal -- drugs. Other customers lounged on black leather couches and chairs, mirrored glasses covering their eyes and, from the way they were sprawled, likely in VR stupors.
The inventor saw this all in seconds, then took a deep breath and lowered his head as he stepped onto the black marble tiles, passing the casino's entrance moving toward the main desk of the hotel. The sound of electronic beeps and sirens from the gambling games filled the air, mixed with the constant babble of voices that were yelling, cheering, slurring, and demanding. The combination of the noises -- or, perhaps, the stress from the current situation -- made Doc's head ache.
He reached the desk a moment later, the only relatively quiet area of the lobby. A young blonde woman with wildly teased hair, clad in a scandalously short, tight leather dress and spiked heels, smiled at him from the other side of the marble counter. "Need some help?" she asked.
Doc cleared his throat, trying to deepen his voice a little. He wondered if he should try to fake an accent to further disguise himself, but discarded the idea almost immediately. Poorly faked accents were worse than none at all when it came to calling attention to yourself. "Uh, yes," he said gruffly. "I'd like a room -- the cheapest one you have, please."
The woman nodded, smiling perkily. "Our cheapest rooms are $1299, plus tax," she explained. "We require the first night's payment up front, to make sure you're legit, but then we'll just charge everything to your room and you can pay when you leave."
"Sounds good," Doc said, continuing to keep his voice low. "Do you take cash?"
"Natch. Wouldn't do much good if we didn't, would it?"
"Great." He reached into his pocket and fished out the wad of 2014 money he'd removed from the DeLorean. "How much is it?"
"Including tax and surcharges? Two thousand even."
Doc's eyes boggled at the cost -- the sales tax must be almost fifty percent now! -- but he counted out the amount -- nearly all the money he had on him -- without complaint or comment. The woman smiled again as she took his money, slipping him a small, flat holographic card.
"Your room and casino key," she explained. "Ever been here before?"
"Ah, no, this is my first time. I'm just passing through to... San Francisco."
The woman whistled as she carefully counted the bills. "Must be a scientist, then," she said, her words startling Doc. "Anyone else would be crazy to go there, 'less they got a suicide wish, what with the bombing last year. Still too hot."
Doc did his best not to react to the news, as he assumed that it was likely common knowledge. A nuclear bomb was detonated, he thought. Wonderful. "No fallout here, I'd hope?" he said lightly.
"Naw, it went south. Poor bastards in L.A. got some wicked rain from it -- not that many people are living there now, either, since the 'quake of '09. I think the Swiss should've dropped something on that city instead of 'Frisco. Would've done all of humanity a favor."
"Ah," Doc said politely. The desk clerk was surprisingly informative. "Is the owner here tonight?"
The blond frowned faintly. "Cliff? No, he's in Vegas opening up the memorial casino for his old man." She sighed, sounding wistful. "Wish I could've met 'im. Too bad he died before I was born."
"Oh? How old are you... nineteen?"
"Almost twenty-four -- thank God for the surgery this job gives out. Before I worked here, I looked worse than a two dollar hooker. Cliff's old man, Biff, died in '96. His wife shot him or something like that. Cliff came in and took over, then." Oblivious to Doc's stunned expression, she nodded at the key card and changed the subject. "You're in room 2015, on the twentieth floor, near the stairs. And if you're going outside at all tonight, take the precautions. The EWS says the rain is a Class Five tonight."
"Thanks..." Doc managed faintly, reeling a bit from the information gained in the conversation. He returned to the elevator, slipping the card into the pocket of his coat. He wasn't so fortunate, this time, to get an empty car; a young chain-smoking couple accompanied him to the twenty-fifth floor, but they were so occupied with making out in the corner that his presence wasn't even noted by them. He left the elevator and made it to the stairway without running into anyone.
The storm, naturally, had gained in intensity during the twenty or so minutes he had been gone. He ducked down low and ran to the relative protection of the awning and the DeLorean, more afraid of getting struck by lightning than of the rain itself, which Doc had the distinct feeling he wanted on his skin as little as possible.
Marty hadn't so much as twitched since Doc had left him. The scientist shook him a little and tried to rouse him, but it wasn't working. He quickly gathered together the supplies he had purchased at the drugstore, as well as the car's first aid kit, stuffed them into a backpack that he had originally packed with camping supplies for their journey, then took the smelling salts he had removed from the kit and waved them under Marty's nose. It took more than a full minute of persistence before Marty gave the slightest indication of coming around -- and when he did, amid weak moans, he nearly passed out again. Doc spoke to him softly, constantly, hoping that the teen could focus on his voice.
"Marty? We've reached a destination. I'm gonna need you to be with me, even if it's just a little, just for the next few minutes. You're gonna need to leave the car and I don't think I can carry you the distance we need to go -- not without arousing too much suspicion, anyway."
"Go 'way," Marty mumbled thickly, his head rolling away from Doc's voice. "I just wanna sleep..."
"And you'll have your chance soon, I promise. But I need you to help me now, okay? Please. Just hold on a little longer." Unsure if Marty was still with him, Doc slipped the salts under his nose again. The teen coughed once, weakly, and cracked his eyes open. They took a while to focus on Doc.
"My arm hurts," he whispered, rather plaintively.
"I know." Lightning illuminated the surroundings for a moment, the resulting clap of thunder so loud and long that Doc knew it had been a close hit. He swallowed hard and slipped his arm behind Marty's back. "Time to sit up, now. Slowly."
Marty was too weak or too far gone to do much more than allow Doc to push him into a sitting position. Perched on the edge of the DeLorean's passenger seat, facing the front of the car, he swayed unsteadily, groaning.
"Head hurts," he muttered, half raising his right hand to it.
"Likely from shock or blood loss," Doc said without thinking about it. "Okay, now you're going to swing your legs around, so that they're out of the DeLorean. Can you do that? Just a little movement."
Marty followed the instructions, sluggishly and awkwardly. Once again, Doc helped him a lot. He allowed Marty a moment to catch his breath and steady himself, then, skittish from the storm, announced the most difficult aspect his friend would likely face: "Time to stand."
"No," Marty whimpered, his head bowed. "I don't feel well. I need to lie down."
"You'll do that very soon. The sooner you stand, the sooner you can be in a comfortable bed and get some more sleep. I promise."
Marty whimpered again, not moving. Doc knelt before him, trying to ignore the lightning flashing at his back. "I'll help you," he said. "Come on, Marty. We don't want to get struck by lightning. We've got enough problems already."
At the mention of the weather, Marty seemed to notice it for the first time. He stared out past Doc for a moment, glassy-eyed, then looked at the scientist and nodded once. "I'll try," was all he said.
Doc slipped his arm around Marty's right shoulder. "All right, on the count of three we'll stand," he said. "One... two... three... ooof!"
Marty made it to his feet with Doc's help -- and then his eyes rolled back and he sagged down, nearly knocking him over. The scientist tightened his grip on his friend, pulling him back up. As much as he tried to revive Marty, though, it was clear that he was out cold for the rest of the night. Too much blood loss, he was all but certain.
"Great," Doc grunted, not pleased. He draped Marty's right arm, hanging limply at his side, around his neck, then snaked his left arm around the teen's back, holding him firmly under his bloody shoulder. He shut the passenger door with his free hand, then half-carried, half-dragged Marty through the heavy sheets of rain over to the roof door. Somehow, he made it without getting struck by lightning, blown off the roof, or dropping Marty. Once inside, though, and with the prospect of descending stairs, Doc was forced to reevaluate his grip on his friend and -- reluctantly, due to Marty's injury -- shifted him onto his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Fully unconscious, Marty weighed a ton and Doc was gasping hard by the time he made it to the twentieth floor, via the stairwell.
Luck continued to be with him. No one was in the hallway when he popped out, and their room was indeed the first one next to the stairwell door. The perfect location, he thought idly as he slipped the card into the slot in the door, should we need a quick escape.
The door clicked open, swinging forward automatically as lights came on. Doc shuffled across the threshold, kicked the door shut behind him before it had the chance to do it on its own, then half-stumbled, half-staggered over to the first of two queen size beds in the room. As gently as he could manage, Doc eased Marty down on the solid black comforter, then anxiously stripped off the backpack, dripping hat and his coat, tossing the last two on one of two chrome chairs set up at a table next to the currently concealed window. The hotel room was decorated much like the rest of the hotel, in blacks, reds, silvers, and golds. The door to the bathroom hung slightly ajar, and with the light spilling into the washroom, Doc could see the vague outline of hot tub. A big flatscreen TV hung on the wall, near the door, and mirrors were up on the ceiling, over the beds.
"I suppose this must be pretty sparse by the contemporary standards if this is the cheapest room," he muttered, half to himself, as he unzipped the backpack on the second bed and dumped the contents of it onto the comforter. After a brief detour to collect the black bathroom towels and slip them under Marty's shoulder, then turn on all the lights in the room, Doc found some sharp scissors and some surgical gloves in the first aid kit, slipped on the latter, then bent over Marty to do start the first process of fixing him up: getting a clear shot at the wound.
Although he had done his damnedest to keep Marty conscious as long as possible, Doc couldn't help but be relieved that his friend was completely out of it as he eased the coat off his shoulders and arms, removed the makeshift bandage from the wounds, then slipped off the teen's button-down shirt and used the scissors to slice through the already-ruined t-shirt.
Once Marty was stripped from the waist up, allowing an unrestricted view of his shoulder, Doc examined the injury carefully, ignoring the faint queasiness it stirred in him. It could've been worse, he concluded at long last, but it could've been better, too. Although he was relieved that the bullet had exited, preventing the need for surgery and an almost-required hospital visit, the exit wound had been the real bleeder. Marty's skin was disturbingly pale, but Doc didn't think he'd lost enough to put his life in danger, not if the quantity soaked up by his clothes was an indication.
Doc sighed, leaning back and reaching for the bottle of disinfectant and a washcloth. He soaked the cloth with a generous amount of the liquid, then started to clean the front wound with it. Marty moaned faintly as Doc touched it directly to the wound and poured a bit of the disinfectant into the wound directly, but thankfully remained out. Once the scientist had cleaned as much of the wound out as he could, front and back, he sprinkled some of the antibiotic powder in the injury, then used the laser and carefully followed the package's instructions to cauterize the puncture and stop the bleeding.
The process was time consuming and tedious; more than an hour passed before Doc had it under control. By that point his entire upper body ached from the stress and tension of conducting such delicate and precise maneuvers with his hand. He leaned back, noticed with relief that Marty's breathing and pulse had returned a little bit closer to normal, then allowed himself a quick five minute break before picking up the small device with the unsavory name of the "Flesh Zipper."
Following the directions included in the package, Doc guided a tiny blue band of light over the wounds, melding the edges closed and leaving little more to tell there had even been an injury there beyond the blood he hadn't yet cleaned up, reddish marks where the light had sealed up the flesh, and the bruises that were just now beginning to appear and darken across the entire shoulder. The discoloration left by the repair was promised to fade in a few weeks time. Once Doc cleaned up the last of the blood around the shoulder, he used the ointment included with the "zipper" on the wound marks, then bandaged the area carefully as per the instructions.
By the time he completed all these tasks and cleaned up the mess of bloodied towels and discarded packaging, it was almost four in the morning. Doc was so exhausted he ached. Even his curiosity about this world and his counterpart wasn't enough to deter him from lying down on the second bed. He didn't necessarily want to sleep, or even intend to -- but it came on so fast and hard that he was gone before he became aware of it.
And, thank God, there were no nightmares.
He was the rope in a deadly tug of war.
On one side of Marty was Doc, firmly grasping his right hand and pulling on it as if to lead him in that direction. "Come on, Marty," he said. "We've got to go."
"Not so fast," came another voice, one that was eerily familiar. Marty turned his head to see... Doc again, grasping his left hand and pulling on it. "You're coming with me."
"No, he's not!" the first Doc insisted, pulling on Marty. The teen gasped, wondering what was happening.
"Marty doesn't appreciate fakes -- and you're one of them," the Doc on the left said.
"Hold it!" Marty told them, glancing at both in turn. "What the hell is going on?"
"You have to choose, Marty," one of the Docs said. "Him or me. There can't be two of us and only one's gonna be left standing." This Doc, the one on his right, paused and smirked. "Me."
"The hell you will," Left Doc said, yanking hard on Marty's arm. He gasped as pain shot up to his shoulder, aching deeply where his arm connected with the rest of his body. "Come here, McFly!"
"But who's real?" he asked aloud.
"Me!" the pair of Docs shouted in unison. Then, in a strange bit of synchronicity, they both pulled guns from their pockets and aimed them at one another -- or Marty, who happened to be in between them.
The teen gasped. "No!" he said, shaking his head vigorously and shutting his eyes, trying to pull away from both men. "You're not Doc! Neither of you are! Where's Doc?"
The sound of his own voice woke him, mumbling aloud for Doc. As soon as he became conscious of that, he became more aware and distracted by the agony in his left shoulder. Marty blinked a couple times, bleary-eyed, and rolled onto his back, off his left side and shoulder where he had awakened. It eased the pain little, although the move made him feel faintly dizzy and he had to close his eyes again until it passed. He felt strangely sleepy, though he had just woken up, and had to resist the urge to drift away again. The dream had been disturbing and he had to make sure it hadn't come true.
"Doc?" he croaked, wincing in pain; not just his left shoulder and arm hurt, but his head, too. He looked up, expecting to see a ceiling -- and was startled to see himself staring back at him. It freaked him out for a minute -- oh God, am I having an out of body experience?! -- before he realized he was staring up at a mirror suspended over the bed. His face was pale, dark shadows under his eyes. A blanket half covered him, and Marty saw with some confusion that he had somehow lost his shirts and the coat he had been bundled into when he last recalled. A white bandage covered most of his left shoulder, where the deep ache was spilling from, snaking almost all the way down his left arm, into his chest, and into his neck.
"Doc?" Marty murmured again, his voice cracking. He coughed a little, his mouth feeling like someone had vacuumed every last bit of moisture out of it while he had slept. God, he would've killed for a Pepsi, or even a glass of water.
There was a creak of bedsprings from nearby, then Doc's face leaned into view, looking tired and a little groggy himself. "Marty?" he asked, clearing his throat. "How are you feeling?"
"Been better. Can I have something to drink?"
Doc hesitated a moment, rubbing the back of his neck as he thought. "I suppose that can't hurt," he said, getting slowly to his feet. Marty watched as he went to a small minibar fridge and pulled out a bottle of what looked to be fruit juice -- and then he became distracted by the large screen hanging on the wall. His eyes widened a little, then narrowed as he took in more of the room, blazing brightly with light. The way it was decorated, in blacks, reds, silvers, and golds, was naggingly familiar. If he hadn't been hurting so badly and feeling so lightheaded and sleepy....
Doc returned to his side with what Marty now saw was a futuristic Gatorade bottle -- the kind with the pull tops, like water bottles -- and two vials of pills. Without thinking about it, he started to sit up in anticipation -- and moaned as the room suddenly spun and shifted, increasing the pain in his head 'til it felt like his skull might split open. Doc pressed him back to the pillows, quickly. "Take it easy," he said softly. "You lost a lot of blood -- and gunshots are a little traumatic to your system."
Marty grunted his acknowledgment of the statement, not wanting to nod right now, feeling so woozy. He took a deep breath, willing the room to be still again. Doc reached over him, took the bed's second pillow and eased it under his head, boosting him up enough so that he could drink without choking. "These are some antibiotics I want you to take now, to keep your shoulder from getting infected," he explained, knocking out a couple capsules into his hand from one of the plastic pill bottles. "The other bottle is painkillers -- strong ones, too, since this world seems to have few drug restriction laws. Is your shoulder hurting, now?"
"Uh-huh. And then some." Marty reached out with his right hand for the juice. Doc handed it to him after a moment's hesitation.
"Don't drink it too fast," he warned even as Marty brought it to his lips and sucked greedily. Nothing had ever tasted better at that moment than the lemonade-flavored liquid. He downed half the bottle before pausing to swallow the pills, then a couple of the painkillers Doc passed him. Three-quarters of the drink was gone before Marty set it aside, for now, in favor of other pressing matters before the urge to sleep again became too great. Namely....
"What happened?" he asked, rubbing his aching forehead with his right hand.
Doc sighed, looking exhausted. Marty had to wonder how much time had passed since they'd left Austria. He frowned, straining his memory. He remembered being shot, of course -- the moment he had noticed the blood on his hand was burned into him for life -- but things after that got rather fuzzy. He'd stumbled around the woods for a while, was all but certain he had found Doc... then his mind ran into a kind of wall.
"Do you remember what happened to your shoulder?"
"Uh-huh. Doc B shot me." He didn't lack the energy to scowl, albeit faintly. "The bastard."
"Yes. Do you remember what happened after that? Tell me what you do recall."
Marty half-sighed, half-yawned. He wondered if his heavy sleepiness had anything to do with his injury, currently throbbing in time to his heartbeat. "I called you, and I think you were gonna try to find me, and I'm assuming that happened...."
"Yes. I picked you up in a little clearing in the woods. Perhaps... twenty minutes after you radioed me. I got you in the car and took a look at your shoulder. The bullet entered here--" Doc pointed to the back of his left shoulder, an inch or so below the shoulder blade. "--and exited here--" He shifted his finger to pretty much the same area on the front of his left shoulder. "--avoiding collisions with bone, cartilage, and major arteries."
Hearing his injury described in that way made Marty feel woozy all over again; he sank deeper into the pillows and closed his eyes for a moment with a grimace. Doc didn't notice his reaction. "The problem was blood loss, mostly, and the possibility of infection. I knew we would have to go to the future to get it treated, but I also knew that I couldn't take you to the local hospital -- any hospital, for that matter -- unless you were on the absolute verge of death. It's required by law to report gunshot wounds to the police -- and explaining how you came to be shot was the last thing I could do. So I did what I thought was best, under the circumstances."
"What's that?" Marty asked faintly, already feeling himself beginning to fade. This was important, but he felt so tired....
"I took us to 2020 in Hill Valley. By that time, I knew the medical technology had improved enough to provide me the kind of tools I needed to fix you up on my own, barring any complications. I cleaned out and cauterized the wound -- using a laser to stop the bleeding -- then used another laser of sorts to close the wounds. According to the package, it won't leave scars. You'll be sore for a while, but once the bruising and the swelling fades, no one but you will know you've been shot there."
"Great," Marty murmured. He wanted to say more, but keeping his eyes open just got too hard. Maybe it was the painkillers; maybe it was the blood loss. Whatever it was, he was out once more.
* * *
When he woke up again, Marty was both hot and shivering, almost like he had a fever. He moaned, half to himself -- and that moan turned into a faint, weak scream when he felt the pain in his shoulder shoot up about fifty notches.
"Sorry," he heard Doc apologize immediately. Marty cracked his eyes open and saw the scientist hovering over him. Without thinking about it, he tried to draw back, the sudden action nearly causing him to faint in the state he was in as dehydration, blood loss, and pain all combined together at once. Doc reached out and slipped a hand on his good shoulder, stopping him.
"Settle down, Marty, it's just me. Not Doc B. I'm just trying to check the wound."
"Hurts," Marty mumbled.
"I know." Doc frowned, his face oddly tense. "Something's wrong," he said under his breath, perhaps thinking he was speaking below Marty's level of hearing, or else that the teen wouldn't understand. Marty did, though -- and his heart started to race.
"What's happening?" he asked, his voice sounding pitifully weak to his ears.
"Nothing," Doc said, clearly lying. "Do you think you can take some more water and antibiotics?"
"Didn't I just?"
"No. That was ten hours ago."
Ten hours?
Marty thought, confused. He nodded once, groaning at the way his head was swimming, and Doc passed him four capsules now -- not two -- and an icy cold bottle of water. Marty drank as much as he could before pushing it away. He looked at Doc, breathing hard from the effort of drinking the water."What's wrong?" he asked again, a little clearer, trying to ignore the fierce, burning ache in his shoulder
Doc hesitated a moment, his face still. "You have a fever," he said at last. "Not a high one, but it's a sign."
A sign,
Marty thought to himself, picturing road signs, for some odd reasons. "Sign of what? The flu?""Not in this case. Infection."
Horror washed over him, chilling his blood to ice. Marty started to shiver again. "No," he whispered.
"Shhh, calm down. Even if it is that, we can beat it down. Just get some more sleep; I'll take care of things."
Marty looked at him miserably. "This is hell," he muttered as strongly as he was able.
"You have no idea," Doc said with a little sigh.
* * *
Marty wasn't sure how much time passed. Strange dreams -- nightmares, really -- chased him down corridors of various degrees of consciousness. He woke up several times, feeling worse than before, the pain in his shoulder almost more than he could bear, but even that couldn't keep him awake for very long. Doc would give him water or juice, give him more antibiotics, then Marty would slip away again, more often than not facing another twisted, armed version of Doc.
He woke during one encounter, as an evil Doc was trying to stab him with a very long, silver knife, and found his Doc giving him an injection of something, directly into his wounded shoulder. Marty thought this was part of a new dream for a minute, then screamed in both terror and pain; all that came to his ears was a faint, weak whine. Doc turned his eyes on him at the sound, gave him a very faint, strained smile, and patted him gently on his left arm.
"This should do it, Marty," he said softly.
Do what?
Marty thought, considerably out of it by this point. Doc gave him some water, then urged him to sleep again -- but Marty had drifted off before he could finish the suggestion.The worst dream, by far, waited for him. He was in a building, the walls a dark gray. Cement, more likely than not. Footsteps were running behind him, and Marty ran away, not wanting to face his pursuer. It didn't take him long before he realized he was in a maze, seemingly one without end. He finally reached a weird hallway with mirrors -- funhouse mirrors that distorted one's reflection in a number of ways. He jogged through this corridor fast, unnerved by the images of himself -- and then came to a dead halt when he saw Doc suddenly appear at the end of the hall, in the direction he was headed.
The scientist smiled, taking a step in his direction -- and suddenly there were hundreds Docs staring at him from all angles, in identical clothes, but with decidedly unidentical expressions. Just as suddenly, Marty realized he wasn't in a hallway but in a room full of mirrors -- and he didn't know the way out. Each time he drifted close to a mirror, one of the Docs would try to grab him through the glass, smirking. The teen's reflexes got a good work out in flinching and jumping away, but the game grew tiresome mighty quickly.
"Leave me alone!" he finally yelled, angry, and ran straight for one of the panes. The Doc in the reflection widened his eyes and stepped back.
"No!" he said, holding his hands up to ward him off as Marty collided with the mirror. He heard the sound of glass shattering in darkness, blinked -- and found himself staring at another Doc, this one scowling down at a scatter of shattered glass on top of a metal table. Just another dream, Marty thought fuzzily, closing his eyes once more.
And, this time, there was nothing but cool, sweet nothingness.
* * *
Doc stared down at the broken bits of glass on the table and frowned, annoyed more by his own clumsiness than anything else. He hadn't slept, beyond a quick catnap here and there, for almost three days, now. He supposed that under those circumstances, a dropped glass had to be expected. Some of his lack of rest was due to what he had learned about the him of this world; most was due to Marty.
Doc cast a glance in his friend's direction, watching him for a moment as he slept, his breathing slow and regular. Doc had noticed the fever in the early evening on Tuesday, when he had checked Marty over out of the concern for how long and deeply he had been sleeping. The unusual swelling and tenderness of the gunshot wound had concerned him. Frantic research conducted via the Internet connection from the room finally led him to a likely and utterly unexpected cause -- the rain.
When the woman at the check-in desk had warned him about the rain, Doc had given it little real thought. Acid rain, he had assumed it was, could be a pain if consumed in large quantities and ruin the finish on some cars and statues. Unfortunately, it was a little more serious than acid rain, he learned quickly. The toxicity of the rain was measured on a scale of one through five, with five requiring those who needed to be in it to avoid any contact with skin, and especially with open or bleeding cuts, as there were a number of chemicals and bacteria in the water that could wreck havoc in a living system. A result, apparently, of the obnoxious chemicals released into the air by local plants and fading biological side-effects of recent wars. The rain that had fallen the first night they had arrived had been classified as a five, and although Doc had spent more time in it than Marty, exposing his bare skin, he hadn't had an oozing gunshot wound. So far as he could determine, enough rain had soaked into the wound through the dressings to cause an infection, despite all the precautions he had taken.
By the time Doc had put all the pieces together, it was Wednesday afternoon and Marty's situation had grown worse. The fever had climbed to a hundred and three and his wound was swollen an angry, puffy shade of purple-red. There was, fortunately, an antibiotic made to combat such infections but, uneasy at the thought of leaving Marty's side, Doc had ordered it from the pharmacy's local Internet site. It didn't arrive until early Thursday, around one in the morning. Doc had administered the first shot as the instructions had said -- directly into the infected area -- and then another six hours later. By that point, the fever had dropped, the swelling had gone down, and Marty seemed to be resting a little easier. The worst was over.
But, in many ways, it wasn't.
Doc grabbed one of the newspapers from the table and carefully scraped the shards of glass into the trash can, doing his best to ignore the headache pounding at his temples. He knew it was from a lack of rest and the stress they were under, nothing worse than that. Marty's bumpy recovery was only part of that. He was more deeply disturbed by what he had discovered in his research.
After Marty had gone back to sleep that first morning, before there was any sign of problems, Doc had logged onto the Internet that looped through the flat screen TV and started a search for his name in the library's online newspaper archives. Up until about 1960, the articles stirred fit pretty much with what he remembered of his own history. Then, gradually, they skewed more sharply, as history did the same.
In 1969, there was an announcement about a bomb or explosion that had rocked a classroom he had been teaching in it at Hill Valley University. It had looked extremely suspicious to the authorities, as his mansion had burned down in an experiment gone awry seven years earlier. Although no one had been killed, and the injuries were fairly minor -- Doc B himself had been unscathed -- the police had concluded that he had created the explosion out of negligence and he had been fired from the University. In what Doc thought of as reality, it had been a full six years later before he had originally left the University on an early retirement, something that had been brought about more by other instructors' unease about his "unorthodox" teaching methods. Doc hadn't minded tremendously at the time. He had been given a good sum when he left, and had thus been allowed ten years to devote a hundred percent of his time and energy to the creation of a time machine. But he had to wonder how he would've felt in Doc B's circumstances.
In 1972, there was a blurb about him on a police blotter when he was arrested under suspicion of harboring plutonium. Fortunately, the charges didn't stick. Doc hadn't acquired that illegal substance in his history until shortly before he'd successfully demonstrated the DeLorean to Marty. He had actually labored for years, looking for a way around such a dangerous substance to power the flux capacitor, but hadn't found any other alternative by the time October of '85 had arrived -- and that had been his deadline of sorts. He doubted that Doc B had had the substance in '72 and was all but certain that Biff had been the "anonymous tipster" to the police.
Although Doc hated to admit it, he was starting to feel a bit of pity as he learned more about his other self. And with that came guilt. How could anything excuse the fact that Doc B had taken his family and machine and was treating both irresponsibly? How did that give him the right to shoot Marty in cold blood?
The scientist pushed away the feelings and plowed onward. As the 1970's rolled on, Doc saw more and more mentions of his name on the police listings for a number of unrelated reasons. Disturbance of the peace. Harassment of citizens. Suspicious behavior at the Burger King in his so-called front yard. To the best of his memory, none of that had been so in his history. Oh, certainly, he'd had cops visit him before from reports of loud noises or whatnot going on at his home, but he had never been arrested or held in jail for it. Once, and only once, he had been written a ticket, and that had been dropped in court when the officer had failed to show up for the hearing date.
On December 20, 1982, there was a lengthy front page article about him with a most disturbing headline: EMMETT BROWN ARRESTED; Suspected of Tannen Robbery.
When Doc and Marty had stumbled into the alternate 1985, Doc had conducted fast and frantic research in order to piece together what had happened to make the world the way it had been. Pure luck had allowed him to stumble on the newspaper that had borne the fate of his other self -- who they thought of as Doc B, now. The headline and photograph had said more than enough. He hadn't taken the time to skim the text with the article -- and now a picture was coming together, slowly. Something told him he had assumed a lot, erroneously, from that single newspaper.
He read the article slowly, determined to take in all the details now. According to the text, someone had broken into Biff Tannen's penthouse two days prior and stolen a small safe from his office. The police had recovered fingerprints belonging to Doc on the scene, and had arrested him at his home under the charge of robbery. The safe, however, hadn't been recovered and Doc B hadn't been inclined to talk. Doc wasn't sure if his other self had been framed or had indeed committed the crime, more likely than not an attempt to locate the sports almanac. It had taken the inventor little time to spot it in a couple of newspaper photographs of Biff from 1958, and he doubted that, once things started really skewing off, Doc B had missed such a find.
There was a flurry of articles in the following weeks, varying in length, updating the information. Doc B was still refusing to speak. Lawyers from both sides were called in. A trial date was set for April 30, 1983. At the last minute, it was delayed for a sanity hearing on Doc B, who was undergoing psychiatric tests on the request of Biff and other "friends" of his, who were coming up with evidence and testimony that he was insane. A psychiatrist, Dr. William Thorpe, finally provided the damning statement in the May 20, 1983 issue of the HVT:
"After observing Dr. Brown and speaking with him, I believe he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and the best course of action would be for him to spend time in a mental ward, where his problems could be treated with the compassion and expertise necessary."
Three days later, on May 23, 1983, Doc found the headline he recognized from their first visit to this world spread over the top of the HVT: EMMETT BROWN COMMITTED; Crackpot inventor declared legally insane. A photograph of Doc B strapped in a straightjacket before a "mental ward" sign accompanied the text. Doc skimmed it quickly, discovering he had been found incompetent to stand trial and instead had been sentenced to fifteen years in Hill Valley's Psychiatric Hospital for treatment and counseling.
"And what he went through in there I can only imagine," Doc had muttered aloud, examining the face of Doc B in the grainy copy of the newspaper photo. "'There but for the grace of God go I....'"
The inventor couldn't help but feel a bit disturbed as more of the picture fell into place. Finding out, in depth, what his life would've been like had he and Marty failed in their attempt to retrieve the almanac was beyond disturbing; facing both that reality at a later date as well as his counterpart made it so much worse. As much as Doc tried to fight it, the more he learned, the more sympathy he felt for Doc B.
There was little news about Doc B after 1983. On June 7, 1997 there was a blurb about his release from the mental ward the previous day, where he had been proclaimed "reformed" after numerous electroshock therapies and medications. This told Doc a great deal about why Doc B was the way he was. He highly doubted that the electroshock treatments he had been given had been administered safely. He also was quite skeptical that Doc B's medical treatment had been regulated much, if at all. While in the pharmacy, Doc had noticed a great deal of new and surprisingly strong medications for sale without any sort of prescription necessary. This had boded well for him, as he was able to collect antibiotics and painkillers that were strong enough for Marty to use without going to the trouble of fabricating a prescription of any sort. But he felt that the effects it had had on the society now were rather grave.
There was no further news about Doc B, so far as Doc could find. As of 2020, he was apparently still alive, as there was no mention of a death -- but that could just as well have been due to Doc B bouncing around in time, too, or never returning to Hill Valley. Had he been in Doc B's shoes, he would've been quite eager to get the hell away from the Tannen regime as soon as possible.
Which, Doc had reflected as he leaned back from the screen, in the chair, brought up an interesting point. If he was understanding their situation correctly, they were following the path of two Doc Bs -- one who had been the first to venture out and change history, and the other who had Doc's own machine and family and was trying to undo what his earlier self had done. With all he had observed and heard from Doc B, he had assumed that both versions of the mad scientist were trying to change history. Logic would suggest that they were trying to make their futures better ones from where they had come from. So why was Doc B trying to undo what he had done originally? Did he really prefer this world to Doc's?
There was, of course, the possibility that Doc B had arrived in his world due to a malfunction of his time machine, was unaware of that being the problem, and was trying to get back home in entirely the wrong manner. Doc wasn't sure when it had been completed; naturally, none of the media told him. In his history, he had purchased a DeLorean shortly after they had come onto the market, in 1981, and had stored it in a rented garage space in Grass Valley, twelve miles east of Hill Valley. His lab was too small and crowded for the project -- and vulnerable to break-ins or prying eyes. Once Marty started making regular visits the following year, it became something of a requirement. Grass Valley was large enough that he was allowed to go about his business and make frequent visits to his space without arousing any suspicion; no one there knew him as Emmett Brown, weird, crackpot scientist. He wondered if Doc B had had a similar situation going on -- and, more importantly, if the contents of that garage had been untouched during his time in the mental ward.
Doc sighed as he reviewed these theories and facts in his head once more. Frankly, he was tired of it, and hoped Marty would wake soon so he could share them and not feel so isolated.
As he slid the pieces of glass off the newspaper and into the trash, Doc couldn't help glancing at the front page in his hands. The headlines all bore dire news. World War IV Rages On; American casualties 2 million. Scientists predict new ice age by 2090. Tannen Enterprises breaks ground on new artillery plant. It looked like the entire world was on a slow slide to death, quite possibly by the end of the century. Frankly, Doc was surprised it had limped along this far.
And their time was running out, too.
Doc glanced at Marty again, frowning faintly. He wasn't certain, but they might have a very limited window of opportunity before this future became set -- and both he and Marty were forced to either fade out or stay where they were. He wasn't sure which would be worse. But he was sure that the sooner they got moving again, the better.
Right now, though, he couldn't do much more than wait. And perhaps do more research into the life of his counterpart, if he dared.
The noise was faint but steady. Marty wasn't sure what it was, at first, and then the idea came to him. Footsteps, quick ones that seemed to move in the same way and at the same rate. Almost like pacing. The sound of a voice, muttering something soft, caught his ear.
"...If an unstable time machine attempted a transit across the fourth dimension, the results should be more dire than being dumped into a parallel dimension. But if the other me is trying to change his history so that his future is this, then he's going about it the wrong way. Which means...."
The voice lapsed into silence. Several footsteps later, it resumed.
"...Travel between dimensions might be a great deal easier than I considered before. If I can find Doc B's machine when we return home, perhaps it'll yield an answer and provide a positive aspect to the madness. Certainly if someone like him could find a way to do that, albeit accidentally...."
Another period of silence. Marty smiled faintly, amused. Doc, he knew now. Doc was pacing and thinking aloud. It was a nice, normal sound, something that he had caught more than once during his years of knowing the scientist. But that was the only comforting thing, he found out. Even without opening his eyes, he knew he wasn't at his home or at Doc's -- things felt different, even smelled different. He started to shift, uncomfortable with lying flat on his back -- and found out immediately why he wasn't sprawled in his preferred position of on his stomach or side.
"Ow!"
The sound croaked out of him softly, a noise of both pain and surprise. His eyes popped open before promptly narrowing against the lamp burning brightly on the table beside the bed. Doc was suddenly next to him, leaning forward to look at him.
"How are you doing now, Marty?"
"My shoulder's sore..." he murmured, tentatively reaching over to touch it with his right hand.
Unexpectedly, Doc's hand went to his forehead, where it lingered a moment before drawing back. "No fever," he said, half to himself. "Good. I imagine you'll be sore for a couple weeks, but it should get better, not worse. Are you up for conversation?"
"I guess..." Marty muttered, groggy. "What do you mean, no fever? Did I have a fever?"
"You had an infection, earlier. I got it taken care of. Do you remember anything from that? You were awake a few times...."
Marty thought a moment, trying to sift through layers of cobwebs in his head. How long have I been out? he wondered, realizing he didn't have the faintest idea what day it was. His body felt so stiff, he had to wonder if he had spent literal days asleep. The thought creeped him out, for some reason. "Uh... I remember waking up here and talking to you about the gunshot, and you gave me some water and pills. I think I woke up again, but was that real or just a dream?"
"Real. You spiked a fever at the end of the first day here, and it turned out to be a rather nasty infection in your shoulder. Came into contact with something you shouldn't've. I got the proper medication for it, and from what I can determine, it's run its course."
Marty turned his head quickly -- too quickly if the pain in his neck and the faint dizziness was any indication -- to look at his left shoulder and arm. The bandage was still there, though the teen suspected it had been changed. He could see bruises snaking halfway down his arm, and that disturbed him deeply. Marty shifted his eyes to his left hand and tentatively flexed his fingers. They moved, but rather stiffly, and the action sent faint bolts of pain up his arm and into his shoulder. He looked up at Doc, his eyes wide.
"Did the infection.... Did it.... I mean, will I be able to play the guitar again?" Marty held his breath as he waited, wondering if he really wanted to hear the answer to that most important of questions.
Doc smiled, faintly. "I'd say so," he said. "Your hand wasn't affected in any way. Just give it a few weeks and you'll be back to your normal pace."
Marty sighed, the most relieved he'd been in his life. "How long have I been out of it?"
"We arrived here on Tuesday, June thirtieth, at midnight. It's now shortly after five A.M. on the morning of Friday, July third."
Marty gulped. He'd been more or less unconscious for more than three days? "Oh my God," he murmured. "I'm sorry."
Doc shrugged. "It wasn't something we could've avoided," he said. "You were shot, after all. These things take time to recover from -- and don't even try suggesting that we leave, now. You're not ready for that, yet."
"Don't worry, I know that," Marty said. He slowly eased himself up, until he was sitting back against the bed's headboard. He felt a little faint and rather weak, but there was none of that overwhelming dizziness he remembered from his last attempt. He took his first good look around the room, noticing once more the tacky decorating and the obnoxiously large mirrors on the ceiling. "Where did you book us? Looks like a real dive if this is... what year are we in, again?"
A peculiar expression danced across Doc's features. "We're in 2020 -- in an alternate future, Marty," he added softly. "This is the future of Doc B's world."
That didn't entirely answer his question. Marty frowned, closing his eyes for a moment as he considered the inventor's words. "What do you mean, exactly?" he asked. "Are we gonna fade out soon?"
"If we stay here indefinitely, that's possible," Doc agreed. "I'm not a hundred percent certain, however."
"Are we safe here?" Marty asked, feeling like Doc wasn't giving him the whole story. "This isn't some weird Nuclear Holocaust world, or one where we're on America's Most Wanted, is it?"
"I think we're safe in that we shouldn't need to worry too much about being killed or thrown into jail if we leave the room," Doc said. "I wouldn't've been able to leave if that wasn't the case." He gestured to a couple of bags set on a chair by the door. "I went to a thrift store down the street to get you some circa '86 clothes to replace the ones you had. Your shirts are ruined; I had to cut through the t-shirt to get it off you, and the other one will never be the same from all the blood."
Marty had thought as much; he couldn't see why he'd be lying in bed without a shirt otherwise. He shivered a little at the reminder of his injury, glad he hadn't had the fun of doing what Doc had done to him. "Where are we now, Doc?" he asked again. "This doesn't look like the Bluebird Motel. It almost looks like that hotel Biff ran in the hell he made."
Doc nodded once. "Yes," he agreed.
Something in his voice told Marty he wasn't just agreeing with his assessment. The teen leaned away from the bed's headboard, sitting forward. "Please tell me this isn't that reality," he murmured, looking his friend straight in the eyes. "I don't think I can handle that."
"All right," Doc said easily, sitting on the side of the second bed. "I won't tell you."
Marty stared at him a moment more, searching for a crack in Doc's serious expression, or a glint in his eye. There was none. The teen's face crumbled. "Oh, God, no, you can't be serious," he moaned. "Does this mean that the Doc B we've been chasing all this time is really the you who was committed in this reality?"
"Yes," Doc said softly.
He felt dizzy, once more. Marty forced himself to take a couple breaths and lean back. "So, are we're trapped here, again?"
"Of course not," the inventor said, taken aback by the question. "When you were shot, I decided the best course of action was to take you into the future so you could recover better and more swiftly with just me treating you. Doc B took his machine and my family to 1849. If he is trying to change history, then it would appear the things that really mattered were executed successfully between 1849 and now. Or else we missed something prior to that time. Or else Doc B made a grave mistake."
Marty didn't get it. "By taking your machine and family? Hell, yeah!"
Doc waved his hand. "No, I wasn't talking about that. I've done a great deal of research into his life here while you've been recovering and I've constructed an interesting theory."
"All right... explain, then."
"I wonder now if Doc B came to our world due to a malfunction of his time machine, propelling him to an alternate reality -- ours -- for some reason. He didn't realize the reason for this might've been mechanical error, believed it was due to a mistake he had made in the past, and is thus trying to correct it in such a way, unaware of the havoc he's wreaking in our history."
Marty frowned, vaguely recalling Doc mentioning a similar idea when he had outlined what was going on, way back in their '86. It was almost too complicated for his still-recovering brain to muddle through. "Then how come we're here?" he asked. "Is the DeLorean busted, too?"
"I'm assuming that something Doc B did -- or undid -- allowed this world to merge with ours."
"You mean like messing with the sports almanac thing?"
Doc frowned. "That's possible -- and almost too simplistic," he said. "I couldn't find any evidence that Doc B knew about that night in '55 when I visited the garage."
Now it was Marty's turn to frown. "You left me here alone while I was out?" he asked, feeling a little discomfited by that admission.
"I waited until you were out of danger and I left notes on the chance you woke -- which you didn't," Doc added. "I could only conduct so much research from the room, after all." He stood up and chanced the subject with breakneck speed. "Are you hungry?"
"A little," Marty answered.
"Good. Why don't I order something and you can get a bath and clean up. I'll explain the entire story after that."
* * *
A short time later, Marty stood before the mirror in the steamy bathroom, stunned by the faintly blurry reflection before him. He hadn't noticed his wound too much on the way in, only thinking to remove the bandages once he had gotten into the sinfully warm tub. (Doc had advised him against a shower; the water hitting his injury would be a little painful, and Marty agreed.) His entire body had sighed in relief with the chance he had to scrub off the grime from God knew how many days. He had lingered in the water so long that Doc had knocked more than once, clearly concerned that he had passed out or something. With the announcement that the room service had finally arrived, though, he had yanked the plug from the drain, hauled himself carefully out of the water, wrapped a towel around his waist -- and then caught sight of his mirror image out of the corner of his eye.
"Jesus," he whispered, stunned by the bruises, first, that darkened his entire left shoulder. They reached outward, to the bottom of his neck, into his upper left chest, and about halfway down his left arm, the ugly blacks, blues, and purples gradually fading in intensity the farther out they were. In the center of the discoloration was a slightly swollen red scar about one inch across, a bit jagged. A scar of half the size, Marty saw as he turned a little, was in the back of his shoulder. Doc had told him before he had gone into the bathroom that the scars were supposed to be only temporary, promised to fade to almost nothing over the next few weeks, and the bruises would do the same. In the meantime, he would have to be very, very careful with what he wore, lest his parents see any of it and ask questions.
He looked pale, too, Marty noticed, wiping away the steam misting up on the mirror. Almost odd considering the high temperature of his bath had been. Dark circles clung under his eyes, giving his face a rather hollow, delicate appearance. Although he had spent far more time asleep than not over the past three days, he still felt tired and weak. It frustrated him; he felt they had spent more time than necessary sidelined for his stupid luck in being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The sooner they left the better, even if it meant spending another few days awake before he had the chance to rest again.
The knock at the door startled him terribly; he almost slipped on the damp tiles. That would've been a wonderful move, Marty reflected, exhaling as he caught himself on the counter. All I need is a concussion from falling and cracking my head on the tub or toilet.
"Marty?" Doc called through the wood. "Need any help in there?"
"No, I'm fine," Marty called back. "I'll be out in a couple minutes."
He tore his eyes away from his mirror image and over to the bags Doc had handed him with some new, clean clothes in them. Uneasy about what the scientist might've chosen, Marty reluctantly pulled out the articles. He was pleasantly surprised, however, to find a pair of worn jeans (the ones he'd had on were splattered with spots of blood and currently balled up in a corner of the bathroom, next to the door, needing a good washing if he ever wanted to wear them again) and a short sleeved black and white button-down shirt that was virtually identical to the one he'd had on the very first night he had seen the DeLorean in action. There was no t-shirt, however, and after he'd dried off and changed -- slowly, his shoulder aching with every movement -- that was the first question he had asked Doc.
"Wouldn't've been a good idea," was Doc's response. "You never would've gotten it on with your shoulder -- and it'll be easier to change the bandages without one."
Marty conceded the point. His shoulder was throbbing painfully just from pulling on the button-down shirt. "I guess," he said, his voice a little tight.
"Let me take a look at the wound, if you don't mind. It needs to be redressed, anyway."
The teen nodded once, unbuttoning his shirt halfway and sliding it off his shoulders. He looked away as Doc examined it carefully, then reached for clean bandages to dress it in. "It looks worse than it is," he said as he deftly worked.
"Not worse than it feels," Marty said darkly.
"You can take a couple painkillers. That should help." The inventor finished his handiwork, allowing Marty to slide the shirt back up and button it. "Up to eating something, now?"
"I think so."
Marty didn't feel hungry, though, until the scent of the food reached him, as he and Doc sat down at the room's little table next to a window or balcony, currently hidden from view by thick burgundy drapes.
Doc had ordered a large breakfast for himself, but Marty found only chicken soup and bread at his place. He asked Doc about this seeming injustice and his response was a question -- he hadn't had anything to eat for a while, and did he want to risk getting sick? Having had more than enough of that on the pirate ship, Marty grudgingly agreed and started in on the soup after swallowing more antibiotics and pain pills from Doc.
"So what's the story with Doc B?" he asked after a few minutes of silence.
Doc smiled tightly as he reached for his coffee cup. "Would you like the short version or the long version?"
"Uh... the basics, I think."
"All right." Doc paused to take a few swallows from his mug. "Doc B is essentially the incarnation of the me who lived with Biff Tannen in power. So far as I have been able to tell, until Tannen got the almanac in 1955, our lives were virtually identical. As time wore on, Doc B found himself harassed a little more by the local authorities, and in 1969, he was fired from his job at the University after an accident in one of the labs there -- an explosion. He was deeply bothered by this, and was positive that it wasn't his fault. He was also very angry at The Powers That Be, but kept that to himself."
"Wait a minute," Marty had to interrupt. "How do you know that? Did he stop by for a nice chat while I was on death's door?"
"I found his journals," Doc said. "His lab in town had been torn down and the land sold in 2000. But he apparently bought a garage in Grass Valley -- the same place where I had rented space for the original time machine's construction -- and it was there I found his notes, his schematics, and a number of journals he had filled over the years."
"Wonderful," Marty said, rolling his eyes. "The ravings of a madman."
Doc frowned at his words but said nothing. He returned to the tale. "Doc B had began to suspect that Tannen was up to something -- his incredible fortune was suspicious. But it wasn't until 1973, when your father was murdered, that he really investigated the matter. Doc B knew that the murder hadn't happened before -- you see, he had been visited by you in 1955, and you'd mentioned that your father was still alive in '85 -- so he began to investigate both the murder and Tannen a little more. He remembered the mess Biff had stirred up with your parents and you during your visit in '55. He saw the sports almanac in one of the newspaper photographs by accident and began to wonder if Biff had actually gotten into the time machine at some point and taken the book from the future. It was idle speculation, but a rather accurate guess."
Marty frowned a little as he stirred the soup in the bowl. "He doesn't sound too different from you, so far," he said cautiously.
"The differences came later," Doc said. He paused to take a forkful of hash browns, then continued. "Doc B suspected that Biff was watching him at this time, keeping him under some sort of surveillance. Harassments continued in the '70's and he was ticketed and visited by police for a number of petty charges. More aspects of the world changed, and Doc B grew more certain and more determined that at the bottom of it all was a time machine. His wasn't done yet, but he started to suspect that Biff might've stolen that information from him in the future, built one, and left it with himself in the past, either by accident or intent."
"Weird," Marty commented, popping a piece of bread into his mouth.
"In 1982, Doc B began to make quiet plans to visit Biff's penthouse when his family was gone. Your mother was married to him by this time, and you were apparently spending your time at boarding schools in Switzerland. Your brother was well on his way to becoming an alcoholic, moving from one minimum wage job to another, and your sister was away at another school in Europe. Doc B's intent was to find some sort of proof to back up his notion, then he would be provided with a way to either bribe Biff or undo the past once he had finished his machine. It was hard to tell which idea he was more in favor of.
"Doc B broke into the penthouse on December eighteenth, while Tannen and your mother were on a business trip to Vegas. He found nothing in his sweep, stole nothing -- but the following day, officers showed up at his door and arrested him on the charge of robbery. A safe was missing from the penthouse, but Doc B hadn't taken it. He knew then that Biff was framing him, sort of, and wasn't going to let it go, this time."
"So what happened?" Marty asked when Doc stopped. The scientist waited until he'd had a couple bites of his toast before answering.
"The beginning of the end. Doc B refused to speak with the police about the safe or anything else. Silence, he had felt at the time, was his only weapon. The truth was too farfetched. He remained in jail for several months, waiting for the trial to take place in April -- but the trial was postponed at the last minute, and Doc B found himself facing visits from a variety of mental health experts. He answered most of their questions truthfully, believing that they weren't part of the Tannen ring. Unbeknownst to him at the time, there was a sanity hearing held on him in mid-May, and a number of doctors and such testified with recommendations that Doc B be committed. It wasn't until after the hearing was over and the sentence in that he found out about it. Officers came into his cell with a straightjacket, and when he heard the news, he went ballistic, and I can't say I blame him."
"Why?" Marty asked, more curious about Doc's feelings on that matter than Doc B's.
The scientist stared at him across the table. "Legally, he was supposed to be at his own hearing with the right to testify and answer questions with proper legal counsel. He wasn't. In fact, he was never even informed that there would be a sanity hearing. Doc B was declared paranoid schizophrenic and sentenced to spend fifteen years in the psychiatric hospital without one of his basic constitutional rights honored."
"Oh," Marty said. He pushed his now-empty soup bowl aside, the food making him feel a little steadier and, oddly, sleepy. He yawned quietly behind his hand, determined to ignore it, for now. His shoulder, at least, was feeling better. "So what happened next?"
"Madness," Doc said, leaning forward, his dark eyes glittering. "Botched electroshock treatments. Overmedication. Physical and mental abuse by the doctors and orderlies. Doc B goes into few details about it; the journals stopped when he was sent away and resumed once he was released in June of '97 with a very different note to them. Even the handwriting was different -- very sloppy and loose. Something had snapped inside of him. He was very, very paranoid, angry, and scarred." Doc's voice grew soft. "He'd lost almost all touch with who he had once been."
Marty was silent a moment, thinking about that. He tried to feel sorry for the mad scientist, but it just wasn't coming. Doc hadn't yet had a face-to-face chat with his counterpart and hadn't been the victim of an attempted murder. "Why'd they let him out if he'd gone 'round the bend?"
"Money, no doubt," Doc said. "He had served his time and there was nothing they could do to hold him. Your mother had apparently murdered Biff in 1996, and his son, Cliff, didn't have it out for him."
A ghost of a smile crept across Marty's mouth at the news of his mother. "Glad she stood up to that bastard," he said. "So what did Doc B do once he was out?"
"He returned to building his time machine, of course. A lot of our history was similar, even after 1955. He had bought a DeLorean like me, and squirreled that away in a garage in Grass Valley, as I mentioned earlier. He had carefully converted his money to more liquid assets and hidden those with the car before he was arrested. When he was released, he hadn't really lost much financially. Doc B felt that he had to go back and stop Biff's rise to power at all costs. Somehow, he was convinced that Biff had gotten a time machine of his own and had changed a number of historic events in history that allowed the Tannens to prosper in some way. He selected a number of different times and places to visit, based on what he felt were implications of time travelers or visitors at work. While in the mental ward, he had prepared himself for this task by studying history and foreign languages, which is why he's been so fluent at it. He wasn't doing any of those things to better himself, though; vengeance was his sole goal."
"Crazy," Marty said, shaking his head a little as he leaned back. "So then what happened?"
"He completed the time machine on April 5, 2000 and left to 'take care of things,' as he put it. There was no mention if he had conducted any tests -- Doc B wasn't behaving terribly responsibly after the time in the hospital. But I suppose that's obvious to you."
"You think?" Marty asked. He yawned again, trying to hide it from Doc. "Is that all you know?"
"Well, of his time spent here, yes. I suspect that his machine broke during one of his 'missions' to 1986, he realized he was in a different sort of future, and for reasons we can only guess, decided to go back and stop his other self from doing whatever it was that he did."
"Because you think he wanted to change the future back to what he knew? Why? I mean, why the hell would he want to go back to that hell?"
Doc shrugged. "We can only assume that to his troubled mind, this is home, this is known, and that he's used to it. Perhaps a greater change terrified him too much. As bad as it is, this is where he belongs."
Marty thought that just proved Doc B was even crazier than he had thought. "So.... uh... you think he somehow figured out what to change to put this back as the future? Then why isn't he here now?"
"Who says he isn't?" Doc asked. "He doesn't have to stay in Hill Valley."
That was true, Marty had to admit. He rubbed his forehead, finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with these strange matters. "So where are we gonna go from here?" he asked finally. "Does this change anything?"
"It changes little," Doc admitted. "We still have to stop Doc B and get my family and machine back. We know more about him, now, and where he came from, which might provide us an advantage of some kind."
"Like what? You think if you stop to talk to him and tell him that he's made a mistake about how he ended up in our world that he'll surrender peacefully? Doc, the guy was gonna shoot me! I mean, he did shoot me, but he had the gun aimed square in my chest and if I hadn't distracted him when I did, I'd probably be six feet under now."
"I am well aware that Doc B is dangerous, Marty," Doc said quietly. "I'm not trying to defend his actions to you, but merely explaining what made him the way he is now. If we hadn't prevented Biff from using the sports almanac, he would be me."
"I know," Marty said, though he didn't, entirely. It was hard for him to ever picture Doc turning into Doc B. He took a sip of the water before him, resting his head in his right hand.
"Our departure from this place depends on your recovery," Doc said. "I think you might be out of danger, now, but your energy level might be a little low for the next few days."
"Don't mind that, Doc," Marty said, even as he fought off another yawn. "I can handle it."
Doc made a noise of utter skepticism. "I think we should wait one more day, at least," he said.
"Where'd you stash the DeLorean?"
"It's on the roof, under an awning of sorts. Safer than the streets and so far it hasn't been disturbed -- I've checked on it several times a day."
"By the way, how'd you get me in here without getting stopped? Last time I didn't even get two steps into this place before getting caught by Biff's three goons."
Doc sighed. "It was complicated," he said simply.
"Did you see anyone I know? Any of my family?"
"No. None of them appear to be living here any longer."
"Do you know what happened to me?"
Doc hesitated. "Yes," he said softly. "You... well, I don't think it was suicide, like the papers did, but in December of 1985 you were found dead in your room at the Swiss boarding school. You had shot yourself."
Marty gripped the arms of the chair tightly. "No," he said, his voice tense. "I'd never kill myself!"
"I don't think so, either. The death was rather suspicious, I think. I suspect that Biff might've had you murdered, in light of your revelation to him that you knew about the almanac. Remember?"
Marty nodded, shivering. "Let's go now," he said. "This place is too much like hell for my liking."
"We will. But you should get some more rest first," Doc said. "The painkillers are probably making you drowsy. If you're up to it, maybe we could leave tonight."
Marty argued against it, although Doc was right; he was feeling drowsier by the moment from the pills. "I feel bad for already sidelining us this long," he said. "Why don't we just go now?"
Doc shook his head. "Get a nap, first," he said, standing. "And I haven't been sleeping much myself lately. We might as well leave here fully rested. Who knows when we'll have the chance to stop again?"
Marty had to admit he was right. "And who knows what we'll face after this?" he added. He hoped the worst was over but somehow, he doubted it.
* * *
About twelve hours later, Marty was shaken out of a light doze by Doc. "Everything's set," the scientist said softly as the teen blinked up at him.
"Are you sure?" Marty asked, sitting up, immediately awake.
"I checked the hallway and stairwell. Deserted. Most people in the hotel and the surrounding area are distracted by gambling or the stripper convention going on right now." Doc paused, his face half hidden in shadows cast by the single burning lamp in their room. "Are you absolutely sure you're up to this, now?"
Marty nodded as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. "I can handle it," he said confidently.
"All right. You do understand that we might not get the chance to rest again for a while, right?"
"Doc, you said that about twenty times since dinner. Yeah, I get it. And I can handle that, so long as I don't have to hang from anything by my left arm. Don't worry."
The scientist nodded once. "All right, so long as you understand." He waited until Marty was on his feet before heading for the door. Marty watched as he cracked it open, peered out, then gestured for the teen to follow.
As Doc had mentioned earlier, the hallway was deserted. Marty did his best to keep up with Doc's long and rapid strides, trying hard not to gawk at the world beyond the hotel room. He hadn't even had a chance to look out the window, yet, having spent half the morning sleeping off the effects of the painkillers, which had left him feeling groggy for the rest of the day and not up for much beyond watching some of the television of the future -- which consisted of old action flicks on the "Twentieth Century Channel."
Although his shoulder was aching again, since the morning's dose of the painkillers had worn off, Marty had decided it was better to deal with the discomfort than deal with feeling sleepy and spacey, especially since mental clarity was going to be rather important in dealing with Doc B. Doc, who agreed wholeheartedly with Marty's decision on the matter, had gone out early that afternoon, after his own nap, and found a sling for the teen to wear, which would make moving his left arm and therefore his left shoulder more difficult and supposedly keep it from hurting as much. Marty figured it was better than nothing and was wearing it despite the fact that it made him feel a little too vulnerable with just one hand free, now, and conspicuous.
Doc had Marty wait while he checked out the stairwell, then once more gestured for him to follow. Marty did so, dragging his feet a little. He hadn't been too happy at Doc's decision that they should ascend to the top of the hotel using the stairs and not the elevator, but Doc was uneasy at the thought of Marty being exposed to others who might recognize him. Marty, personally, felt that was being a little too paranoid, since the him of now had been dead thirty-five years, apparently. But the scientist hadn't been swayed, and so they were to climb ten flights of stairs.
The climb was slow and painstaking. Although he had slept a lot in the last several days, his energy wasn't what it normally would be (Doc was blaming his loss of blood for that) and he had gone about two flights when he started using the banister for support... and two flights after that he was using his right arm and the banister to pull himself up the steps. By the time the twenty-sixth floor was reached, Marty was gasping for air and felt dizzy from the continuous circular motion of the stairway. He stopped at the landing and leaned against the wall for a moment, trying to catch his breath.
Doc paused for a break of his own. "Are you doing all right?" he asked. "We can take it slower."
"Maybe that's a good idea," Marty gasped.
Doc waited a few minutes for Marty to catch his breath, then had them continue onward and upward at a somewhat slower pace. That helped, but only a little. By the time they got to the door to the roof, Marty felt on the verge of collapse.
"I hope there're no stairs to climb at the next place," he said breathlessly. "'Cause I don't think I could take it."
"I doubt there will be at the next stop," Doc said.
"Where's that, again?"
"1849 in California. I did a little research on the matter and -- brace yourself."
The advice came as Doc opened the door to the roof. Immediately, wind gusted in, whipping back Marty's hair and taking his breath away for a moment. When he did remember to breathe, though, he almost wished he hadn't. The air reeked terribly -- a smell like burning trash, sulfur, and something like spoiled, sour milk. And, Marty saw to his faint horror, he could see the air quite well. It looked dusty or smoky.
"Gross!" he muttered, keeping his head down as he followed Doc onto the flat roof, trying not to breathe in too deeply. Being back up on the roof was giving Marty a bad case of deja vu; the last time he'd been up here, Biff had followed him with a gun. The teen couldn't help casting a quick, uneasy look over his shoulder at the roof door, half expecting to see the overgrown bully lurching after him and Doc. The door was closed, though, and they were alone.
While Marty had been plagued by bad memories and paranoia, Doc had made it to the DeLorean, unlocked it, and gotten inside. "Come on, Marty!" the scientist called, startling the teen into movement once more. Marty trotted around to the other side of the car and got inside quickly.
"Where's our destination?" he asked, as Doc turned the time circuits on.
"Eight P.M. on June 11, 1849 in Tumbleweed, California," he said, entering the information while he spoke.
"And what's there?"
"From what I've been able to determine, Tumbleweed was one of those towns that sprouted into being from the gold rush. In this history, nothing particularly important happened there. The town is a ghost town, now, abandoned in the late 1800s when the mines and the gold petered out."
"So, basically, you have no idea what's gonna happen there."
Doc smiled faintly as he started the car. "Pretty much."