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Las Vegas itself had been another casualty of the war, though plenty of foresight had made it possible for residents to prepare for the eventual evacuation. But even from Desert Hills, it was clear that the casinos and grand hotels that had made the city famous had also been converted to ruins as Hill Valley had been.
As far as Doc was concerned, it was another reminder of the destruction that he had helped unleash upon the world.
Marty was visibly uncomfortable looking at the ruined city, clearly remembering what had happened to his home; whimpering, he turned his face away and shut his eyes, trembling in his seat.
“Oh, Marty…” Doc began, but then he froze.
As he had turned to tend to Marty, he had noticed another car that had been parked in his blind spot, now visible that he had changed his point of view. His blood froze again—that car had not been there before he had parked the DeLorean to view city’s ruins.
After briefly considering his options, he restarted the DeLorean and sped the car off across the sand. Marty let out a startled scream.
To Doc’s horror, the other car also took off, following the DeLorean.
Doc did the only thing he could do—floor it. The terrain worked against him, the car repeatedly becoming momentarily airborne when the uneven terrain served as makeshift, miniature ramps.
“Doooooooooc!” Marty cried.
“It’s okay—you’ll be okay! I promise!” Doc vowed.
He cut the wheel as they approached a large rock formation, swerving behind it to momentarily hide—he knew the emphasis would be ‘momentarily,’ for the DeLorean’s tracks in the sand would betray the hiding spot immediately. He had two minutes.
He put the car in park and unbuckled Marty’s seatbelt; Marty moved for a security cling, but Doc gently placed his hands on Marty’s shoulders.
“Marty, I need you to hide, okay?” he asked. “Curl up and make yourself as small as you can and see if you can fit down there.” He indicated the tiny space under the passenger’s side of the dashboard.
Marty gave him a dubious look.
“Why?”
“Marty, please!” Doc begged.
He heard the other car approaching and knew he had to act; he opened the driver’s side gullwing door and ran around to the passenger side to block Marty from view. And he then grabbed the pistol he had hidden in his lab coat; it had been unloaded, just as it had been for years—but, hopefully, he could bluff his pursuers into retreating.
He held up the weapon as the other car rolled towards him, bathing him in the headlights’ beams. The driver’s side and passenger’s side doors opened, and a silhouette emerged from each side.
“Get back!” he ordered. “Get back, or I’ll fire!”
“We come in peace, Doctor,” a voice replied, and Doc realized it was one of the men from U.N.C.L.E.—and the other was, obviously, his partner. “I’m Napoleon Solo, and this is Illya Kuryakin—we briefly crossed paths when we, ah… helped you escape your pursuers.”
“Oh…” Doc sighed in relief as he recognized Napoleon’s voice.
His knees finally gave out from under him as the adrenaline wore off, and he crashed to the sandy ground, but Marty, who had been watching from inside the DeLorean, could only see from his view through the window, and had only seen Doc falling out of sight—falling just like his father had.
The three-year-old unleashed the most piercing scream that he was capable of making; Doc scrambled to a sitting position, trying to reach the passenger side gullwing door, but Illya beat him to it.
Illya tried to help Marty out of the car, but Marty swung his arms at him.
“I hate you!” he screamed, angry tears streaming down his face. “YOU HURT DOC!”
“Marty, no—I’m fine!” Doc exclaimed, extending his arms to the child. “I just fell over… I was tired…!”
Marty now scrambled out of the car and clung to Doc, sobbing into his shoulder again as Doc held him close, giving him more words of reassurance before looking up, rather sheepishly, at the two agents.
“Sorry…” he offered.
“It’s alright,” Napoleon assured him.
“You needn’t apologize—especially to me,” Illya said, glancing at Marty with a sympathetic expression. “I recognize a fellow orphan of war when I see one.”
Doc blinked in surprise, still comforting Marty.
“I lost my family during the battle of Kyiv in ’41,” Illya continued. “They prioritized my survival—and it worked, but at the cost of their own lives. This little fellow is even younger than I was, and I expect his story is similar. Marty, is it? I’m terribly sorry that we indirectly caused you so much distress.”
Marty sniffled and still clung to Doc, but did look back at Illya, no longer mad at him.
“Had we known you had a ward, our approach to contacting you would’ve been less… dramatic,” Napoleon admitted.
“But I was trying to find your outpost—that’s the entire reason I drove out here…!” Doc pointed out.
“We surmised as much,” Illya said. “That was why we knew we had to intercept you.”
“Our outpost here has been compromised,” Napoleon said. “It seems as though the men who had been holding you in their custody figured out that you would be turning to us for help after our aiding your escape.”
Doc paled as the horrifying realization set in.
“They’ll be monitoring all of your other outposts, too,” he realized. “We won’t be safe there!” He shut his eyes, holding Marty close. “You can’t help us. And by now, I’ve got bulletins and bounties out on me from coast to coast!”
“And beyond, alas,” Illya sighed. “Your knowledge is valuable to a great many countries.”
“…So I can’t stay in one place, or else they’ll find me,” Doc groaned. “I’ll forever be on the run.”
“We’ll need to hold on to the hope that this can end,” Napoleon added. “But, in the meantime, though we can’t offer you shelter, we can help in what few ways are still possible.” He handed Doc a pen. “This pen is a communicator; you can get in touch with us for money, provisions, or anything else within reason—we’ll find some way to get it to you.”
Doc nodded, but then glanced down at Marty.
“…I was… never officially assigned as his guardian,” he admitted. “I only volunteered to look after him because he had no one else and had gotten attached to me—and also because I was banking on you being able to shelter us.”
“He doesn’t need to be a part of this,” Napoleon said, though with some hesitation. “We can’t give you shelter, but we could give it to him. You would have our personal assurance that he would be well taken care of.”
Marty clearly did not like what he was hearing, and he threw his arms around Doc’s neck again.
Doc steeled himself with a sigh before gently pulling Marty back so he could look him in the eyes.
“Marty…” he said, gently. “I promised that I would take care of you by doing what was best for you. But, things aren’t going the way that I was hoping they would. There are going to be bad people after me, and I don’t want them to hurt you just because you’re with me. You’ll be safer with these nice people.”
Marty shook his head.
“No!” he exclaimed. “I don’t wanna go with ‘em! I wanna go with you!”
“Marty…” Doc sighed. “Marty, listen—a long time ago, I did something that I thought was the right thing to do at the time, but it was wrong. And now, people are fighting over what I helped do—that’s why they’re after me. …That’s why you lost your home and your family—because of me. Don’t you see, Marty? You’ll be safer if you’re not with me.”
Marty was quiet for a minute, and Doc was wondering—hoping, even—that the blunt truth that he was partially responsible for the rest of the McFlys’ deaths would finally convince the child.
“You’ll be safe,” Doc repeated.
“…I’ll be sad,” Marty retorted.
Doc sighed again.
“Marty, after everything I just explained, why do you want to travel with me?”
“‘Cause you’re my best friend.”
Doc just blinked.
“…You only met me yesterday!”
“So?”
Doc facepalmed.
“…You know, they say that young children and animals can tell a person’s true nature,” Napoleon mused aloud. “You may not be accomplishing much with this back-and-forth, but you’re getting a pretty good character reference.”
“But what am I supposed to do, then?” Doc asked, at his wits’ end.
“You have an unenviable decision to make, it’s true,” Illya remarked, bluntly. “Either he is to be safe with a broken spirit, or he is to be in danger, but with his spirit unbroken. Truly, practicality and sentiment seldom go hand in hand.”
Doc gave a glum nod and glanced back at Marty, who, only moments before, had been screaming in agony at the thought that he had lost the one person he had left. Marty didn’t see him as a fugitive nuclear scientist or an agent of destruction—as he had just said himself, he saw him as his best friend.
…Neither of them had anyone else now.
“…Alright, Marty,” he conceded. “You can stay—”
Marty hugged him again, and Doc just sighed again as he returned it, hoping against all hope that he had made the right decision.