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Frozen in Time Part 2

A moment passed with Marty staring at this strange British man who inexplicably stood in Doc Brown's lab. Marty couldn't focus on the strange blue box looming behind the man, because he was far too aware of the stiff body of Jennifer lying on the cold floor behind him.

"What did you do to Jennifer?" Marty forgot his apprehension and took a menacing step forward.

"Who?"

Marty felt something white-hot in his brain. He instantly recognized it, and gave himself over to it completely. Rage. He lunged at the man, grabbing hold of the collar on his light blue pinstripe suit with both hands and pushed him up against the blue box, his voice cracking as he screamed at him.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER!"

The man, who had called himself the Doctor, looked behind Marty and then he saw her, the young girl lying on the floor, her face frozen in a terrified scream.

"Listen to me," he looked down at Marty. "I swear I had nothing to do with that."

"Yeah, you swear?" Marty pulled his fist back, ready to punch him in the face.

The Doctor put his hands up defensively. "You can hit me, or you can let me look at her. I might be able to help."

Marty's mind raced for a second, he couldn't think straight.

"Help? Who the hell are you!"

"I'm the Doctor and whatever happened to her happened before I even got here!"

Marty's grip loosened a little.

"You're a doctor?" Marty asked uncertainly.

"I can help," came the reply.

Marty let go of his suit, his hands shaking from the adrenaline. "I swear to god, if you had anything to do with this-!"

The Doctor was already moving away from him, running over to Jennifer as he pulled what looked like a silver pen out of his pocket. He crouched down and a blue light shone from the tip of the pen as he waved it back and forth over her.

Marty tried to walk towards them, but he felt his legs give out and he crumpled to the floor, sitting in the doorway and staring and the two figures helplessly.

"Please tell me she's not dead. She can't be dead…" How could she be dead when they were supposed to get married? Have a home together? Have a family together? He could feel tears running down his face, but he didn't bother trying to wipe them away.

"She's not dead," came the Doctor's reply.

"What?" Marty sat up a little. "She's alive?"

The Doctor turned and looked at Marty.

"What can you tell me about what happened here?"

"I asked her to meet me here, but I was late and when I got here-" Marty looked around at the trashed lab. "I don't know what happened here."

"What's your name?" The Doctor walked over to Marty and kneeled down in front of him.

"What?"

"Your name?" He asked again, his kind eyes looking the teenager over.

"Marty… Marty McFly."

"Marty McFly, Jennifer is not dead, but she's not alive either."

"What?"

The Doctor grabbed Marty's shoulder's, maybe trying to reassure him, maybe trying to keep him from lashing out again. "She's out of sync with time."

The word "time" sent a strange prickling sensation down Marty's spine.

"Essentially, she's been frozen in time."

Marty's eyes went wide. Had something in the lab done this? Some experiment of Doc Brown's that had gone awry after being neglected for so long? Was this Marty's fault for asking her to meet him there?

"Well how do we unfreeze her?" Marty was beginning to panic again and the Doctor needed to calm him down if he wanted to get this situation under control.

"First we need to figure out how this happened."

"It could be anything in here. Any of his inventions could have done this."

The Doctor narrowed his eyes. "Any of whose inventions?"

"Doc Brown's."

The lights suddenly went out.

Marty jumped to his feet and the Doctor followed him, both blindly looking around.

"Who's there?" Marty called into the dark.

The Doctor held up the silver pen and the strange blue light began to emit from it again, this time instead of scanning it shone light over the destroyed lab.

"What that thing supposed to do?" Marty finally asked. What kind of thing can scan a person and also double as a flashlight? Could it turn the lights back on too?

"Sonic screwdriver."

"A screwdriver?"

"Time traveller detected," a strange robotic voice called out.

Both the Doctor and Marty instinctively tensed up.

"Subject acquired."

The lights came back on and in the blink of an eye the thing had emerged from its hiding place and now stood in front of the two. It dwarfed even the Doctor, it's face hidden by a filthy hood. It looked like the figure had robbed the clothes from a homeless man, and as Marty wondered what was so familiar about these clothes he felt the Doctor shove him towards the door.

"Run! Get out of here!" The Doctor called out.

Marty didn't know how he was supposed to run and leave the Doctor behind when this person or thing was clearly after him. Time traveller it had said. This thing was after time travellers and that's why Jennifer was attacked. However briefly, Jennifer had nonetheless travelled to the future with Marty a month ago.

The thing grabbed the Doctor's neck and began choking him. The Doctor's screwdriver was knocked out of his hands and despite his best efforts he couldn't defend himself against the figure.

Marty looked around until his eyes fell on a metal pole lying in the wreckage. He quickly pulled it out and hit the thing on its back as hard as he could. A loud metal clang rang out and Marty felt the hit reverberate up his arms. He dropped the beam and called out in pain. He couldn't figure out how or why it had come to be there, but now Marty knew that this thing strangling the Doctor was a robot.

One of the robot's hands released the Doctor and swung out, Marty tried to dodge out of the way but it managed to just clip his jaw, sending himself flying to the ground. The force of the swing made the hood fall from the robot's head, and now the whirring gears and exposed wires of its face could be seen.

It looked like a crudely made robot, a robot without skin and all its metal bones and electric muscles exposed, with bright red lights for eyes. It wasn't chunky, every piece on the skull had a purpose, the Doctor could tell that much. This robot had been made by someone incredibly good with electronics.

"Run!" The Doctor choked out again, but he was beginning to realize that Marty was not the kind of person who abandoned someone in danger.

Marty got up, tasting blood in his mouth, and jumped onto the back of the robot. He started grabbing at wires, desperately trying to pull them out and incapacitate the robot, but none of the wires would budge and with its swinging arm the robots was trying to grab Marty and throw him off.

"Won't-work," the Doctor gurgled.

"What do I do! How do I kill it!" Marty ducked as the robot's arm swung over his head.

"Surge-elec-tricity-or-"

The robot arm grabbed Marty's hair. Marty screamed out and the robot jerked his head back and he let go of the robot. He felt himself get thrown across the room and hit the wall, hard. In his daze he heard the Doctor say one last mangled word.

"Mag-net."

Marty pushed himself up, but for a second could see nothing but blackness. His vision started to come back, like a tunnel of light, and so did a memory, something from months and months ago. He couldn't remember anything else from that day, but he could remember being here, in Doc Brown's lab, asking a question he had asked a dozen times:

"What's that Doc?" He had been asking about yet another strange contraption the Doc was working on.

"An Electro-Magnetic Pulse, Marty. One push of this button and anything electronic within range will immediately overload and shut off."

Marty was instantly on his feet searching through the wreckage. He could remember seeing in the lab after that, always in the same place on a shelf, but now that shelf was knocked over and all its contents lay trapped underneath in a chaotic pile.

The robot, meanwhile, was beginning its real work. Its coat parted as its chest cavity opened like a door, a long metal shaft with a burning light at the tip emerged from within.

"Marty!" The Doctor choked, trying to get the teenager to grab his sonic screwdriver, but Marty was lifting a shelving unit off the floor and wasn't paying attention to him.

The Doctor knew this robot was the weapon that had frozen Jennifer in time and now it was going to do the same to him.

Marty knew the danger was growing, knew he was running out of time, but no matter how hard he looked through the rubble, the Electro-Magnetic Pulse was nowhere to be found.

To Be Continued…

(Why did I pick the 10th Doctor? I wanted a version of the Doctor who could match Doc Brown's energy, so it had to be one of the new ones. The ninth was too broody, and I wanted someone who looked and acted older than Marty, so the eleventh was nixed as well. Ah number ten, the perfect balance. Now that that's out of the way, how's episode one so far?)