Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future.

Author's Note: Yes, yet another chapter. And we're getting somewhere, so that's important. Marty is figuring out that not all might be what it seems concerning prisoner Brown. Let's hope that he comes to the right conclusion before it's too late, right? And yes, the general theme is similar to the Game's, but I warned you about that, didn't I?

Chapter Eight

Tuesday, June 7, 2016
06:45 AM PDT
Outside of Tannen Valley, California

"You know, this really doesn't look like much."

Emmett smirked at Jennifer. They were in the house he and his family lived in in the nineteenth Century. What had then been a comfortable house was now largely run down at best, a wreck at worst. But even if it had been a total ruin, Emmett knew that one thing would still be intact – his underground safe.

If only he knew where exactly it was.

He paced across the floor of the house, and nodded. "It doesn't" he admitted, trying to stall for time. "But I can assure you that once I'll find what I'm looking for, you will agree with me that this was an important trip to make."

Jennifer nodded thoughtfully. "I see" she replied. "And where, if I may ask, is that thing what you are looking for?"

"I'm… not sure" Emmett admitted, softly. "I'll find it, though. No matter what happens, I know I'll find it."

He winced, as he continued the search. Continuing to pace around, he tried to recall what exactly he was looking for.

The safe under the house was the only place he had for secret documents besides the garage. He had hidden it carefully under the living room floor, and it had a lock on it. Inside were several important files on time travel, as well as identification which described his past. He had hid it there in case something ever happened to him and Clara and the boys needed to get out of the 1880s, but it would serve this purpose just as well. All together, it would probably be enough to convince Jennifer who he was, and also enough to build a time machine. Of course, he would need to find a vehicle first, but once he had gotten the anti-Tannen resistance on his side, that shouldn't be a problem anymore.

But the only way to do that was to find the safe. And right now, he couldn't find it. Emmett let out a short curse under his breath, frustrated. His home in 1895 was radically different from the state it was in now. Inner walls had been demolished, and the ground floor consisted of only two rooms now. He'd made sure the ground was solid and the safe was at a small part of the room, so it would be a nearly impossible task to take apart every inch of ground to find that stupid safe. And he had no clue how many steps to take from the wall to find it. He had known that in 1895, but now the wall was gone. He could ask for a metal detector, but he presumed the resistance hadn't got one on them and wouldn't have the patience needed for one of them to go and get one.

"I have to find it" he muttered, under his breath. "I have to."

"Having little luck?" Jennifer inquired half-sarcastically. Emmett felt the urge to tell her to shut up, but resisted. She was the only one that could help him here, she and the group that supported her. But if they started to believe that he was kidding them – then there'd be heck to pay.

"I'll find it" he eventually replied.

"I can't really believe that anymore" Jennifer said. "It has been over ten minutes now, and you still haven't found that supposed safe of yours. I'm sorry, Mr. Brown, but I'm afraid your cover's blown."

Emmett looked up at her. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"That you are trying to guide us right into the hands of the Tannens" Jennifer responded, motioning for her guards to pull out a gun. "If not for this delay, we would be in our shelter by now. We would be safe. This is your trick to let us run into the hands of those no-good criminal leaders of our town."

Emmett paled visibly. "No, no, it's not!" he exclaimed. "Give me five more minutes, I will find it!" To himself, he added: "Or rather, I must find it…"

Jennifer contemplated that request. "Maybe" she replied. "Or maybe not."

She turned to the guard. "Give him two minutes. If he hasn't found anything by then…"

Her sentence was cut off by the sound of gunfire outside. "Great Scott!" Emmett exclaimed.

Jennifer ran towards the window, then turned to Emmett with a fierce look on her face. "It's Marty Tannen" she growled. "You guided us into this!"

"I-I'm sorry!" Emmett called out. "I understand it will be hard to believe I am innocent under these strange circumstances, but you have to…"

His line was cut off as well as the door was broken open. Within a few seconds, the Tannen goons stood in the living room, guns firing. Jennifer and her gang pulled out their own guns and started firing back.

Emmett felt horrified. He needed to get out of this, as soon as possible. The sixty-five-year-old ducked and tried to make his way for the back door. He never got half of the way. One weak floorboard that had been shot off the ground by the sudden gunfire had just bent over enough to be an annoyance to the inventor. He tripped and fell to the ground. The sixty-five-year-old only caught a last glance of the familiar gleam coming from the spot part of the board had been on before he lost consciousness.

oooooooo

The fight between the Tannen and anti-Tannen groups lasted about as long as it did in any direct confrontation – until either side started to risk running out of bullets. Some members of both gangs ended up getting wounded, but neither sustained fatal wounds. In the end, though, Jennifer's group ran out of ammunition, and fled out of the house.

Marty immediately ordered his associates to go after them, 'to bring them to justice', as he put it, but he decided to stay in the house that had now been reduced to a ruin after the intense gunfire. There was still one man inside it, though – an unconscious Emmett Brown.

"Want me to shoot him now, sir?" his prime assistant asked. "Will be quick and painless, and efficient."

Marty shook his head. "No, can't really let the bastard get out of this without being hurt" he replied. "And no matter how much I hate him, he deserves a fair trial. He'll get another twenty-four hours before death."

"Fine, sir" his second assistant asked. "Drag him back to the prison, then?"

"While he's still out" Marty agreed, nodding. "Yeah, do that. I'll be with you shortly."

"Whatever you say, boss" his first assistant replied. They dragged the semi-inventor away. Marty sighed as he looked after them. He hadn't really thought this man was such a bad guy. Insane, yes, but in other ways, he was reasonable. Now that he had escaped from the Tannen prisons, though, and had associated himself with the Parker gang… Marty shook his head. Death was the only way to punish him now.

He was about to follow his subordinates when his eye fell on the board which had been twisted out of contortion and moved from its place after Emmett's fall. "Might as well replace it" he muttered to himself. If this was one of the resistance's lairs, it wouldn't help to have someone trip over it in a search for anything useful left in here. He pulled it out and was about to bend it over and put it back on its place, when he saw what was underneath it.

Clearly recognizable with an unmistakable knob and numbers around it was a safe. It was a small one, not comparable to those in his office – or in those of his brother, for that matter. But still, it was a safe. Marty frowned, kneeling down. He wondered what combinations he could think of to open it…

"Uh, sir?" his prime assistant asked. "Would you…"

"I'll be with you in a minute or two" Marty replied. "There's just something here I need to sort out." He gestured for his assistant to leave, which allowed him to focus on the safe again. Whose could it be? It looked too antique to belong to the resistance, especially with the spider webs and dust over it. Perhaps it belonged to the strange old man? Marty recalled he had spoken about documents and about living in the past. Did that mean…

He smirked, shaking it off. Surely that man couldn't own a safe. He was crazy, and Marty was crazy as well if he ever started taking the guy seriously. Nevertheless, he somehow felt drawn towards the safe. And there was no harm done in trying out combinations – it could even be a fun break from his usual work. The forty-seven-year-old thought hard. If he was a time traveler trapped in the Nineteenth Century – he couldn't help but smile at the idea – then what safe combination would he use?

Suddenly, he remembered something. That would-be-time traveler had told him he was stuck in the year 1885. Apparently, he was Clint Eastwood. And Clint Eastwood had supposedly not died in the ravine on September 7th, 1885. Marty grinned, and dialed the combination. It didn't work.

Then what about the day Emmett had supposedly met his wife? Marty thought hard. He remembered it was the same week – something that was very implausible in itself, of course, since romantic relationships never blossomed quite so fast – and tried to dial several dates in early September. Each of them failed to work. He was stuck here.

The Tannen Valley police chief was about to get up and kick the safe in frustration before exiting when he got another idea. What about the day Emmett had gotten stuck – New Year's Day, 1885?

He hesitated. On one hand, he knew all this was ridiculous. He should just go home and try to forget about the silly lunatic he had met – well, after signing his death sentence of course. But on the other hand, he hadn't had this much fun in quite some time now. Smirking, he tried January 1st, 1885, fully expecting it to fail.

Naturally, in the situation he was convinced the combination would fail, it didn't. Before he knew it, Marty found himself holding the door of an open safe.

The forty-seven-year-old gasped, and peeked inside. It was cluttered with all kinds of documents with complicated diagrams on it. He frowned – how could some lunatic have made such sophisticated papers? And they were all in uncle Emmett's handwriting, too! Or at least, he believed that was his uncle's handwriting – the poor fellow had died years before, so Marty figured he did not have much of a memory to rely on.

As he got the papers out of the safe, after each other, Marty's eye finally fell on one object in particular. However, it was no document – it was a photograph. A photograph depicting Emmett – either one, since they did look remarkably alike after all – on the right, wearing 1880s clothes and looking happier than Marty had seen their prisoner look thus far. On the left, however…

Marty gawked. It was himself – or at least, someone who was the spitting image of him as a teen. "This can't be" he uttered, wishing the photograph to go away. It didn't. "Holy shit!"

The police chief stumbled to his feet and managed to steady himself against the wall. The face that was staring at him from the photograph was so undeniably him that he got nauseous every time he looked at it. When he flipped the picture over, he saw the writing on the back read 'Emmett and Marty, September 5th 1885'.

Him… and Emmett. In 1885. The explanation for the picture was right there, and yet Marty found himself disbelieving it. It had to be some kind of fakery. After all, Emmett couldn't be telling the truth, could he?

That notion calmed him down a bit. It simply couldn't be the case that prisoner Brown was a visitor from another world, and that this world had been created with a time machine. Imagine – if Emmett's story was true, he wasn't even a Tannen! Marty smirked at the idea of being a McFly. The McFly family had never amounted to much, Marty knew that. They had seemingly disappeared from Hill Valley in the 1960s, after their only son, George, had repeatedly shown himself to be a failure. And that guy was supposed to be his Dad?

Marty shook his head. There had to be a rational explanation for all this. But he would need to find it. And he knew he couldn't do anything else but attempt to find it, since he would not feel at ease until he was absolutely sure that prisoner Brown was a madman.

Sighing, he took the documents from the ground, added the photograph to them, and locked the safe. After carefully putting the board back on its place, Marty exited the near-ruin of a house and re-entered his comfortable limousine. He just hoped that once he got back to Tannen Valley, he would be able to put these annoying and distracting thoughts about other timelines to rest and figure out a reasonable explanation for all this. If not, he wasn't sure what else there was left for him to do.