Silhouette by Arthur McMahon Read Free Book Online Page A

a way onto the command ship— so she waited, and she listened. Patience was her strongest ally. Information was her deadliest weapon.
    In her exploration Silhouette ventured into the containment area, as X had labeled it, otherwise known as the prison, and it was a dark, damp place. How could it be damp? The complex was surround by an arid landscape, yet the prison was cold and miserable. It was different than the one she had been in as a child. She had been locked in a room with others, but here the cells were separate from one another, each one a solitary confinement.
    Test-tube-like chambers were stacked in rows across the large room with blue lights illuminating the insides of the occupied cells. They were tight, confining, and there were many dozens of chambers to be filled, but only a handful were occupied by prisoners. The Burmin must have made a recent slave run to their homeworld and emptied the compound prisons .
    The air smelled like wet concrete. Silhouette crept along the chambers, easily avoiding the lone Burmin who sat at a desk in a corner of the room, its face buried into the screen of some small device.  
    The prisoners were fatigued and listless except for one man who felt about his chamber, searching for something to grab on to, something to twist or pull, something to help him escape. He must have been a recent addition. The others rested, silent and still.
    Another man with dark brown hair and a thick, umber beard caught Silhouette’s attention. He was a handsome young man and slept like most of the others, but he was too thin, too weary. Silhouette stood in front of the chamber, a clear wall separating her from the sleeping man. She studied his features and found them— comforting.  
    His eyes opened.
    The man looked directly at Silhouette and for a moment their eyes locked onto one another, or so it had seemed. The moment passed. Silhouette noticed that his focus was not on her as the man’s eyes rolled away and he turned his body, adjusting his position. He closed his eyes again and returned to sleep. She stood there in the blue light for a long time, longer than was safe, and she watched her brother sleep.
    Her brother Davi was imprisoned like she once had been, waiting to be sent away and sold as a slave. He could wind up on the other end of the galaxy where she would never be able to find him again. He was beautiful, familiar, family, and he was despairingly malnourished and frail.  
    Love, fear, anger— it all boiled to the surface. Silhouette’s skin burned and her muscles tensed, her rage urging her to break open his cell and run away with him to freedom.
    The blue lights of the chambers blinked and were replaced with a lime green; then the white ceiling lights brightened. Silhouette’s rage dropped away in an instant, replaced by adrenaline. The Burmin in the corner of the room grunted and stood from its seat.
    Silhouette crawled to the furthest corner of the room and squeezed behind a dusty holding tank. She watched the Burmin as it approached the occupied chambers with a box held between its left arm and torso. It walked up to one of the occupied cells and pressed a series of buttons which opened a small slot next to the chamber’s glass wall. The imprisoned man’s anger and frustration bellowed into the room as he stuck his fingers out through the slot, reaching for anything he could. The Burmin smacked the man’s hand hard with a metal rod and he cried out in pain. The Burmin then slid a gelatinous brick through the slot and pressed another button to close it again. Is that supposed to be their food? Silhouette wondered.
    Next the Burmin gave a brick to a woman who eyed the flat, beige rectangle with repulsion. The block of food rested neat and untouched on a small shelf inside of the cell beside her.
    The other three prisoners accepted their food and ate it, none looking pleased about it. Silhouette’s Ocu recorded the button combination pressed on her brother’s cell and she