Needless to say George was rather flabbergasted by what he was currently witnessing. The doctor had tied the detective up to a chair! The constable had heard about a kind of rough play acting among couples before they became more intimate. But his only real source of information was Henry, and George didn't know how reliable the man really was when it came to these sorts of things considering he wasn't as big of a ladies man as he liked to think. But what other explanation could there be for such a bizarre tableau?

George started to blush, something he had been doing annoyingly frequently these days.

Dr. Ogden was the first to speak. "I can explain, George."

The detective caught his eye. He seemed to be weary and defeated, as if the doctor had just dominated him. "Yes, there is a perfectly logical reason as to why Julia has done this to me."

Finding his voice he exclaimed, "It's none of my business! I'll just be going now! Here," he said tossing the stolen skeleton key into Murdoch's lap, "please take this back, sir! Forgive me for ever taking it!"

Before he could leave however, Julia had called out, "George! Come back! You deserve to know the truth!"

In the hallway he turned around to face them again, cheeks still burning brightly. Waving profusely he said, "No, no! That's quite all right, doctor! I'll just be taking my leave now! I never should have barged in on you two while you were..."

His eyes fell to the ground and he saw a broken lamp and what appeared to be dried blood. They widened and he looked at both of them again. This went far beyond any kind of strange sexual behaviour he had ever heard about!

Puzzled he pointed to the discarded mess and said, "What happened here?"

"The doctor hit me over the head with the lamp, George. As I well deserved."

Detective Murdoch had been acting badly recently but George did not think that qualified as a reason to bash one's skull in! He looked to Julia for confirmation.

She sighed and said, "It's true I'm afraid. I did do that."

Their calm manners stupefied him.

"What on earth for?!"

"It's complicated and difficult to understand but you deserve to know the truth because without you...well I don't want to think about what would have happened without your interference."

They sat him down and explained the situation as simply as possible, as if he were their son and he had witnessed his parents love making. The doctor did most of the talking and Murdoch only added bits and pieces to the conversation when necessary. The longer they spoke the higher his eyebrows rose and the farther down his jaw dropped.

A double from the future? First teleportation and now this? What next? Martians? How wonderful would it be if I met one of them!...Focus George!

Gesturing towards the still tied up man he said slowly, "So this man is not Detective Murdoch but a ne'er-do-well version of him from the year 2012?"

"Yes," she said.

"And we all have doubles in this Toronto of the future...including myself?"

"Yes."

"What was he like?"

She hesitated for a moment. "William told me that he was a brash young man with little patience and manners and not very pleasant to be around."

"Really?" said George surprised. "Is every version of us worse off in the future then?"

Avoiding eye contact she said, "Perhaps...but enough about this, there is plenty of time to discuss it later." Julia turned to the alternate Murdoch and said, "Right now I need you to tell me where William is. There is only about an hour and a half till our wedding is to be begin and Ruby and Emily will surely come looking for me if I don't make an appearance soon. And I'd rather not have to explain this all over again."

"Of course." Murdoch seemed apologetic. "Unfortunately there is no way you will make your wedding deadline."

Dr. Ogden frowned. "What do you mean? How far away is he?"

"He's quite close by actually...but the manner in which I have trapped him makes things a bit... tricky."

Her brow furrowed deeper. "Tricky how?"

"I gave him a taste of his own medicine."

George had no clue what that might mean but he didn't like the sounds of it one bit.

With as much menace as he could muster on short notice he said, "If you've hurt the detective, you scallywag, you reprobate, I'll-I'll show you what for! You'll-"

The doctor put a hand to his shoulder and he was silenced. "Is he in the same building as Dr. Roberts?"

"No, it would have been foolish of me to do such a thing with Professor Harms coming around daily to check on his brother."

"About that..." she continued.

"What happens to Dr. Roberts?"

She nodded.

"The professor writes an autobiography about his life and work in about fifteen years time, he details everything in there. It's a very good read, I suggest you pick it up. But back to the matter at hand...William is in the basement of a building on Jarvis street." He glanced down at his lap and the skeleton key, "You can use that to get in there if you are averse to teleporting."

She snatched it up eagerly and was half way out of her chair when George stopped her.

"Uh, doctor, he has yet to give us a specific location."

Julia sat back down again and said, "Well?"

"I'll tell you in just a second but first you need to get a pen and paper and write down the following instructions exactly as I say them. Otherwise...well, it's best if you don't know."

George shared a look with her and they scrambled to do as he said.


Julia's lower lip trembled as she viewed William in the cryonics tube that the alternate Murdoch had built from schematics he had stolen from Professor Harms. As a result, it too was emitting a bluish glow from its depths that was vaguely unsettling. William looked so peaceful and she wondered what he was dreaming about and hoped his looks matched his mind.

She placed a hand to the frosty glass and whispered, "Don't worry my love, we will have you out of there soon enough."

Before she could tear up she compartmentalized her feelings and got down to business.

"What did we have to do again, George?"

He held the paper up to the single light bulb in the basement ceiling. "We have to open up a side panel and then manually override the system, whatever that means and-"

"Can I see that?"

The constable held it out to her. The instructions were a bit complex but were stated simply enough so that they could follow them, or at least so that she could. Understandably, her future vocabulary was markedly better than George's.

She read the paper a few times and then said, "All right, George, go ahead and open the panel."

He nodded at her and retrieved a flat headed screwdriver from the tool box they had brought along. About half a minute later the arm wide panel was off and they just stared at the mass of wires and knobs and then at each other. It would be very easy to make a mistake. And if they did, well, she would never forgive herself.

Julia directed George's actions, all the while holding up a flashlight so that he could see what he was doing. She got rather alarmed when he almost turned the wrong dial because he had mixed up his directions. After profusely apologizing, they got back down to it and before long there was only one more dial to turn. At this point however her helper hesitated to do her bidding.

"What are you waiting for?"

He glanced back at her from his kneeling position.

"How do we know we can trust him? For all we know if I turn this knob the whole thing will explode, killing all of us, leaving him free to terrorize the city!"

Something they hadn't covered earlier was that if one died, so did the other. She didn't feel like getting into this right now.

"There's no bomb rigged to this device, George."

"But how do you know?"

"Despite everything he's done, I do trust him. There was a sincerity in his eyes that is difficult to fake."

"But possible. After all he did trick you for over a day."

Something I will never forgive myself for.

"If he had wanted to kill us, he could have done so a thousand times already."

"True, but you know how these types are doctor, they like to play games-"

Julia was beginning to understand a little why the alternate Murdoch often lost his patience around George.

"Just turn the knob, George. And make sure it's to the left."

"All right," he said. "Here goes nothing."

Once he turned the knob there was a loud hissing sound and George jumped back like a cat would when frightened. A white mist was rolling out of vents from the upper and lower quadrants of the cryonics tube, and if she didn't know any better would have thought it was some sort of poisonous gas and reacted like George had. But she did know better and knew it was simply caused by the dry ice effect, the same sort of thing that was used to keep the morgue cold room...well, cold.

Other than this, nothing was happening. And she knew it wouldn't for hours, all but ensuring that their wedding would be missed, as future Murdoch had predicted. But she didn't care one toss about that if it meant getting William back, safe and sound.

In order to make sure William was revived successfully, this process had to be done very slowly so that the partially frozen water in his cells did not expand too rapidly and burst, instantly killing him, like a brain aneurism. Even with this slow warming process in place, the risk was still high that something could go wrong. But she had hope that William would be all right because his double had survived the process, albeit in the future, from a different more advanced cryonics tube, and the aid of medical stimulants that they simply didn't have now...

Keep it together Julia!

When the time was right, she would have to rely on an injection of caffeine citrate to bring William out of his comatose state. Emily had unknowingly used adrenaline to do just such a thing when that disturbed woman had drugged him and tried to drown him in the bathtub last year. But Julia did not have access to adrenaline extract, nor was it being produced anywhere, so she would have to make do with the caffeine.

As to how future Murdoch had escaped his prison in the first place, she still didn't know. But if she had to hazard a guess she would say the police managed to follow the money trail, (even though William had made sure to use his alternates 'secret' account) demanded to have him released and then somehow Murdoch had gotten away from them. If future Julia had been involved in this blunder, she was a bit incompetent, which for some reason really embarrassed her, as if she herself were at fault.

George touched her forearm to bring her out of her ruminations.

"How may I be of assistance now, doctor?"

"Assuming all goes according to plan...(meaning William survives)...our wedding would have to be postponed for at least four hours but most likely much longer than that. In other words, it needs to be rescheduled."

"I'm sorry."

She simply nodded. "I need you to use that creative mind of yours to come up with a plausible reason as to why this rescheduling must occur."

"Like what?"

"Maybe something to do with William taking ill. That at least would be partially true and is less likely to arouse my sisters suspicions."

"But if you say that she will surely want to come around to check up on you two. As will your father...and Emily-"

"You will just need to find a way to keep anyone from visiting."

"But how?"

"I don't know...say that I suspect his illness is contagious."

"All right," he said uncertainly. "I suppose that could work."

He turned to leave. "Oh and George, you will need to relocate William's double to a less accessible location...here for instance, just in case someone does decide to drop by."

"And how am I supposed to do that by myself?" he said frowning.

Julia jerked a thumb over her shoulder and he followed the path to a familiar looking multicoloured object on a hook.

Oh for the love of...

"On second thought, George, you should probably do that right now and then inform the guests when they show up to the church."

George changed into the suit while she stood watch over William, caressing the viewing glass as if it were his face.

A few minutes later he was done and she explained how to extend the teleportation field to include others in it's pull and then wished him luck. He gulped, pressed some buttons and vanished.

What seemed almost immediately after but was probably several more minutes of time, he returned...empty handed.

"Did you not understand my directions?"

"No, it's not that, doctor," he said somewhat distraught.

"Then what?"

George sighed. "I'm afraid he's escaped."

She closed her eyes for a few seconds. "You're quite sure?"

"He knocked over the chair and apparently used the broken shards of glass to cut through his restraints. And I checked the surrounding area...there's no sign of him. What do you want me to do about it?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?!" he exclaimed. "Surely-"

She waved a hand at him. "You're not likely to find him. And I need your help dealing with the wedding."

"But he might try something again!"

"Then we'll deal with it if and when the time comes."

They shared one last look and then he disappeared again, leaving her to fret over this latest piece of troubling news in private.


During the next few hours George had made only two more appearances. Once to tell her about how the news had gone over; predictably badly, and once to inform her that Ruby was being difficult and demanding to see her, not caring about the supposed risks. It took a lot of finagling on George's part but eventually he succeeded in getting her to go with him to her house, or rather outside of it, to reassure her sister first hand that everything was under control and that she was sorry about this turn of events but there was nothing she could do about it.

Emily had also been present but hadn't asked any questions and simply observed her. George later informed her that she too knew about the suit and had badgered him for the real truth. But he hadn't told her anything different from anyone else, causing her to get annoyed with him and storming off.

Julia knew that Emily was quite taken with the young man before her and was simply frustrated at his lack of initiative in moving forward with their relationship. But she couldn't very well tell George this or she would be betraying her friends trust and be no better than a gossip.

"I'm sorry to hear that, George, I know that you two have begun courting. But I thank you most deeply for continuing to cover for me."

"Of course, doctor."

Wanting to reassure him a bit she put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Emily will come around sooner or later. She always does."

"I suppose," he said glumly.

After a bit of an awkward silence he peered into the cryonics tube and asked, "How much longer till the detective can be awoken?"

"I'm not sure. But according to William's double, the door will simply open when he has thawed out enough to inject the stimulants."

"Do you want me to wait with you till then? It's rather gloomy down here and there's no telling if that scoundrel might show up again."

"Thank you for offering, George but it's not necessary."

"Are you sure?"

Julia realized she was being stupid. Of course George would want to make sure everything turned out all right.

She smiled. "On second thought, I would greatly appreciate it if you did."

He returned the smile and then they prepared for the task ahead.


Just when she didn't think she could take his ramblings about his infinite number of aunts any longer, there was a loud beep and the cryonics door swung open slowly. George stopped mid sentence and they hurried over to the tube in which most of the ice had been melted.

The constable helped her pull William out of there, (he was still a bit cold to the touch but that was to be expected) and then they laid him out on a morgue stretcher that George had procured.

Julia opened her medicine bag, with the already prepared needle within and shakily retrieved it. After saying a silent prayer she injected it into his right arm. Whatever happened next was out of her hands and she hated the feeling of having no control.

An intolerable number of seconds passed by and still nothing happened.

"Maybe you should give him some more caffeine?"

"No, I already gave him as much as I could. Any more and I will definitely do more damage than good."

Julia checked his pulse and was dismayed to find that there was none!

Becoming a bit frantic she slapped his face a few times, startling George. "Wake up, William! Wake up, dammit!"

When that had no effect she started hitting his chest over and over again and then remembered something about this thing called CPR in the future. She didn't know how to do it exactly but she did know this one part.

Julia tilted back his head and breathed into his still abnormally cold mouth, illiciting more confused remarks from George.

Then she moved back to his chest and pushed on it in a more methodical manner and again repeated the breathing exercise.

While she was in the middle of this for the fourth time, his eyes popped open and she pulled back quickly so that he could cough violently. Once that had subsided he complained of being cold. She wrapped a thick wool blanket around him and then grabbed him, so happy that he was all right.

He held on limply and said, "What took you so long?" repeating the same thing she had said to him after he rescued her from being buried alive.

The response was the same, they just laughed and laughed and George joined along with them.