Free Hard Magic by Larry Correia

away. “You lied about Delilah too. I was suspicious that a bunch of Actives just happened to know we were going to be there to catch her. I did some checking yesterday. I’ve got some cop friends in that area, and they say she didn’t kill anybody during any bank robberies.”
    That seemed to take Purvis by surprise. Apparently the Chicago agents had been in the dark too. “So who were those dead men in the photographs?” Purvis asked.
    Hoover exchanged glances with the agent named Tolson. The taller man seemed baffled. Apparently they hadn’t prepared an answer. Finally Hoover spoke. “That’s not important. Just know that she murdered them. And the highest levels of government want her caught. Do I make myself clear?”
    “Yes, sir,” all of the agents answered simultaneously.
    Sullivan didn’t say a word, but inside he was seething. He just squeezed the crumpled contract in his hand, pummeling it with his Power as Hoover walked out. When Sullivan finally let go, a hard ball of compressed wood pulp the size of a marble hit the floor and rolled away.
     
     
    San Francisco, California
     
    The room was kept dark, thick curtains closed. The lights hurt the boss’s eyes, and Garrett also knew that despite what his employer said, the boss was ashamed to let anyone see him closely. He had been a proud man once, an unbelievably strong man, and it hurt Garrett to see him in this state.
    “So let me make sure I got this straight,” his employer said from the bed. “A single Heavy fought a Brute to a standstill, caught a dirigible that was already in the air , knocked out Heinrich, beat the ever living hell out of Francis, and resisted your Influence?
    “That about covers it,” Daniel Garrett replied. It was rather embarrassing to have his entire crew defeated by somebody with one of the most mundane of all Powers. “Every other Heavy I’ve known was employed as manual labor or on a construction job. I thought all they could do was make heavy things light enough to temporarily pick up. This one was different. It was like he had more than one type of Power.”
    The General shook his scabrous head in disagreement. Even that small motion seemed to pain him. “No,” he rasped. “There’s only one man in the whole world who possesses more than one type of Power. This man, everything he did came from the same Power, the magical alteration of gravitational pulls. He’s just . . .”
    “Different,” Garrett said.
    “Resourceful.” His employer had to stop for a moment to cough into his towel.
    Garrett wasn’t so sure about that. He did not have a head for science, but the tools the Heavy used seemed to go beyond just altering gravity’s strength and direction. His gut told him that something was different about this one.
    The General’s coughing fit continued. The sound was painful as his lungs ground and struggled for purchase. The hacking continued for another thirty seconds and Garrett started to rise to get Jane, but his employer waved for him to stay seated. Finally the white cloth came away stained with blood, and the man continued as if the spasm had never happened. “Recruit him,” he gasped.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Hire him, Garrett. Find this Heavy and make him a job offer.”
    “No offense, General, but the new girl threw him through the dirigible. I’m relatively certain he’s dead.”
    “No,” he said, gesturing with one skeletal hand at the telegram on the desk next to the bed. “After you reported in I did some checking. Apparently he doesn’t die easily.”
    He took the telegram and read it. Finally he whistled. “Impressive.”
    “Apparently that power-mad imbecile, J. Edgar Hoover, agrees with you. That’s why he was sprung from jail. Hoover doesn’t understand Powers. He just tries to wield them like clubs. Treats Actives like mushrooms. But we could use a man like this.”
    After looking over the telegram, Garrett didn’t feel quite as bad about losing to the Heavy. Very few