Free Involuntary Control (Gray Spear Society) by Alex Siegel

raised his eyebrows. "We'll see you later. Good luck hunting."
    * * *
    Bethany shivered in the darkness. She had spent her entire life with her twin sister, never apart for more than a few minutes at a time. Leanna's abduction had happened two hours ago, and it felt like an eternity. Bethany didn't know when she would see her sister again, or even if her sister were still alive. She couldn't begin to imagine how to go on without Leanna. It was like losing half her brain and half her heart.
    Bethany had another problem. She needed to pee and her toilet was inside her house. If she didn't go home soon, she would make a mess in her underwear, and she hated messes.
    She hadn't gone far. She was sitting behind a rose bush across the street from her home, watching her front door. The grass prickled the skin on her bare calves.
    The lights in the house had been off for a long while. Logically, that meant nobody was there and it was safe to enter. However, her enemies sometimes acted illogically. How could she assess risks without well defined probabilities? The problem wasn't well posed.
    Regardless, Bethany needed to start looking for her sister, which meant she needed her computers. Also, Bethany had to pee, badly.
    The pressure in her bladder forced a decision. She ran to the curb, carefully checked for traffic in both directions, and ran to her front door. She knocked politely just as she had been taught to do. When there was no answer, she knocked again. Satisfied that she had followed proper protocol, she typed in the code on the hidden keypad under the flowerpot. The door lock clicked.
    She went inside and turned on the lights. Nobody was in the front room.
    She proceeded into the living room where the computers were set up. She immediately noticed some of the wires had been pushed out of place. She carefully straightened them.
    Finally, she went to the bathroom. After she was done peeing, she wiped herself four times with four separate squares of toilet paper. She folded the loose end of the roll into a neat point.
    She returned to the computer room and sat in her chair. Being there without Leanna felt very strange to Bethany. The workstation was meant for two users.
    She called up the surveillance video recordings on one of her monitors. Cameras were located in every room of the house, and the coverage outside was almost as complete. Bethany watched the enemy from multiple angles as they captured and tormented poor little Leanna.
    Bethany became too agitated to continue watching. She needed another task while she calmed down. She decided to pack a suitcase in case she had to travel to rescue her sister.
    She went into her bedroom. There were two empty suitcases under the bed, but she only needed one this time. That felt very wrong.
    She had no idea how many articles of clothing to pack. After some thought, she settled on twelve shirts, twelve skirts, and twelve pairs of underwear. Twelve was divisible by two, three, four, and six, which made it a very useful number. Clocks had twelve hours for that reason.
    She considered whether to put her shoes in the suitcase. She absolutely hated shoes and avoided wearing them whenever possible, but sometimes she had no choice. For example, she couldn't go into a restaurant barefoot. She knew the rule even if it made no sense. People didn't eat with their feet after all. With great reluctance, she packed her shoes.
    There was one item she could never leave behind. She reached under her nightstand and unlatched a hidden panel. A necklace dropped into her hand.
    The necklace included hundreds of small diamonds arranged in a curved grid that went around the wearer's neck. Bethany found the pattern pleasingly symmetric. A diamond pendant the size of a golf ball hung at the bottom of the necklace. Intellectually, she knew the pendant was far more valuable than all the other diamonds, but she still didn't like it. The pendant didn't have the same pattern of facets as the small diamonds. It was