The Time-Traveling Outlaw by Macy Babineaux Page A

but there was a sparkle in his eye. Logan could see he had him on the hook. 
    “Okay,” Sam said. “Basically it works like this. We have to find an object from the time period we want to visit. Every atom in your body is as old as the universe itself, but if enough atoms exist in a centralized space in a particular time period, they act as a sort of temporal anchor. Do you see?”
    Logan wasn’t sure he did, but he nodded anyway. “Yeah. Go on.”
    Sam put the table down and rubbed his hands together excitedly. Working under Sturgess, he probably didn’t have many chances to explain his work, and it was probably killing him.
    “The object needs to be large enough to have a critical mass of atoms that coexisted next to each other for a particular stretch of time,” Sam went on. “What I do is, I then extract a small number of subatomic particles from the anchor, and essentially entangle them with the atoms in the subject’s body. The temporal disjunction between the particles from the anchor and the subject’s own temporal signature naturally generates a temporal displacement field. Just a small amount of energy introduced at the edge of the field causes the subject to flicker out of this time period and into the time of the anchor.”
    Logan thought he might understand now, at least enough. “And the anchor is how you found me again, and brought me back?”
    Sam’s eyes lit up, like a teacher realizing their pupil finally grasped a particularly difficult lesson. “Yes!” he said, raising his voice without meaning to. Sturgess and Kazu looked over.
    “Everything all right over there?” Sturgess called out. 
    “Yes, sir,” Sam said, the grin disappearing from his face. He picked the tablet back up again and put his head down.
    “Where is this anchor?” Logan said in a low voice. 
    “You should just lie back and be quiet now,” Sam said. 
    “Listen,” Logan said. “You don’t know what kind of a man he is.”
    Sam’s eyes flared at this. He put his face close to Logan’s. “Don’t you say that,” he said in a strained whisper. “Don’t you tell me that.”
    Then it hit Logan. “What did he do to you?”
    Sam straightened up, trying to compose himself. He looked over his shoulder once more, and the men had gone back to talking. “He has my daughter,” he finally said. “He’s keeping her in a house somewhere. He gives me updates twice a week. She has a nanny that he’s hired, toys, games.” Tears welled in his eyes. “He assures me she’s well taken care of. He says it’s additional motivation.”
    “Sam,” Logan said. “Listen to me very carefully. We haven’t got much time.” The irony of saying that with the power of time travel at their fingertips crossed his mind, but he pushed it aside. “Send me back.”
    Sam’s eyes grew wide. “Oh no,” he said. “I can’t do that.”
    “Listen to me,” Logan hissed, desperate. He forced himself to speak softly the next time he opened his mouth. “I can change things.”
    Sam squinted at him. “What?”
    “Things are different from when sent me,” Logan said. “Little things. And if I can change little things, I can—”
    “—change big things, too.” The brightness began to return to Sam’s eyes, but then almost immediately faded. “It won’t work. They’ll just force me to bring you back again.”
    “What if you can’t?” Logan said. “What if I take the anchor with me?”
    A smile formed at the corner of Sam’s mouth. He looked Logan in the eye, seemingly impressed that he had thought of something Sam hadn’t. “Yes,” he said. “That might work.”
    “He might hurt your daughter anyway,” Logan said. “When he’s done with you. That’s what he does. But I might be able to save her. I might be able to save my—”
    “But what if you can’t?” Sam asked.
    “Who would you rather put your trust in?” Logan asked, knowing it was a gamble. He was banking on this man putting his trust in a convict,