The Time-Traveling Outlaw by Macy Babineaux

pocket of his lab coat. Had the pocket been on the other side when Logan had last been here? With a click of the thumb, the light came on, and Sam propped open Logan’s right eye with his thumb and forefinger as he waved the light across his field of vision. Logan flinched, but restraints held his arms and legs now. Sam did the same to his left eye.
    “Pupil response is normal,” Sam said. “Give me some time to run some diagnostics.”
    “I hear you just fine,” Logan said. He’d thought about keeping his mouth shut, but he couldn’t resist. 
    Sturgess took a step forward and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Incredible,” he said. “Who would have thought you would have been the first success?”
    Logan looked at Sturgess. His face was the same, with his slicked-back hair, wolfish features, and dark eyes. Logan dropped his gaze to the man’s suit, the same gray pinstripe as before. But something was different. The tie! Before it had been yellow. Now it was a deep maroon.
    Logan’s head was beginning to clear, and a realization was beginning to seep in. He had gone to the past, and when he had returned, the world was different. Just how different, he didn’t yet know. The changes so far were small, but distinct. The style of a beard. The color of a tie. And yet, he had only been in the past for about a day. What if he could stay longer? What if the changes he could make could be more significant?
    He looked at Sturgess’s face, so much like his ancestor, and the seed of an idea began to germinate in his mind.
    “Run your tests,” Sturgess said to Sam. He then nodded at Kazu before looking back down at Logan’s naked body. “And cover him up.” Sturgess walked away from Sam and Logan, the familiar sound of his heels clicking on the concrete floor. His man Kazu gave Logan a quick glance, then fell in behind him. They walked perhaps twenty paces away, out of the light that fell in the center of the warehouse. There they stood in darkness, facing each other and whispering.
    Sam began to place monitoring pads across Logan’s body, first on his forehead, then his chest. 
    “They’re deciding what to do with you,” Sam said. “You’ve made it quite difficult by coming back alive and sane.”
    “Glad to disappoint them,” Logan said. “What about you? You don’t look too happy, either.”
    “This is my life’s work,” he said. “It finally worked, so yes, I should be pleased.” He attached pads to Logan’s thighs.
    “But?”
    Sam’s eyes flicked to the two men talking in the shadows. “Just please be quiet while I take these readings.” He took a tablet from a nearby table and began to type on it.
    Logan realized if he was going to do something, he needed to do it now. It was entirely possibly they would just gather as much data as they could and then dispose of him. He had been a success, yes, but they might be able to get enough information to help them going forward. Maybe they didn’t necessarily need him. Even if they didn’t intend to kill him, there was no way they would send him back, and he desperately needed to go back. He needed to see her again, but now there were also things he needed to do, one in particular.
    “Took you a while to find me, huh?” Logan said.
    “Please,” Sam said, looking back over his shoulder before typing more on the pad.
    “Which is funny,” Logan said, “because the first thing I did when I got there was to put my finger down my throat and make myself throw up that pill you made me swallow.”
    Sam let out a little snort. “That’s not how it works,” he said. “The entangled temporal particles had already dispersed throughout your system.”
    Logan had known more than a few geeks and techs in his life, and one thing they all had in common was that they loved to explain what they were working on. They just couldn’t help telling the world how smart they were. 
    “How does it work?” Logan asked.
    Sam glanced back at the men one more time,