Free The Overlord: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel by Jared Paul Page B

she often built small weapons or other defenses for use out in the field. Sentria was a brilliant mind with a brilliant smile. That smile greeted me when I found her tinkering away at a desk beside her bunk.
    I presumed she had been waiting for me, but right then, I knew it was me who'd end up having to wait. Uninterrupted, her genius could consume the whole night. Luckily, disruption was the very reason of my coming. I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, trying to force a break in her mind's process. My chin then pressed onto the top of her head and she sighed contently, leaning back into my chest.
    "You know, I'm trying to work here," she stated without a hint of actually being upset over my intrusion.
    "What are you working on?" I investigated.
    She held up a bracelet, blinking with little lights and wires of all sorts. "I call it an Angel Gate."
    "A what?" I chuckled.
    She elaborated, "It's a protective shield that springs out from this wristband, absorbing all incoming energy and recycling it into a self-destruct blast. It can take whatever the enemy can throw at it, all while safely preserving me inside."
    "Let's go test it out," I enthusiastically suggested, ready to watch something possibly explode.
    Sentria refuted, "It's not ready, yet, but if it does work, it might just save my life if I ever got caught in pinch. Might even save somebody else's too."
    She then reached back for me, but found my yellow snapback instead. Knocking off the neon hat, it fell atop the clutter of her desk. She wondered as she picked it up.
    "Just write whatever first comes to mind," I nudged.
    "I'll have to think about it," she said, getting up and gathering her things to leave. "Morning's still a long ways away and I don't want to think about the mission right now. Take me somewhere else, somewhere away from here."
    "Then let's go," I indulged. "The stars can be our blanket, just for tonight."
    Sentria slapped my hat backwards on my head, just the way she liked it. Arm in arm, hand in hand, we then left her quarters and snuck away outside.
    Sneaking away was something we always did the night before one us got sent out. Those kinds of nights weren't to be wasted as they could easily turn out to be the last. The evening before the Fever Island mission, though, we took comfort in the fact that we'd be together the next day. We were both being sent out.
    In the forest outside the Lair, we sat down upon some dry rocks beneath the trees and watched the water flow from the nearby falls. The moss and leaves around us were still damp from the rain and every drop of dew that glimmered in the moonlight was a perfection to behold.
    I whispered over the soft wind, "Radiation, deserts, it all seems so far away out here. If the whole world used to look like this, can you imagine what it must've been like when the nukes hit down, destroying it all? Consider it a blessing we were both born in the wasteland. The planet was dead by the time we came around. We never had to know what it was like to have it taken away because it was already gone, but these woods almost numb that reality. Almost."
    She snuggled into my shoulder, "There's something in the air here that I can't seem to figure out. Have you ever noticed how things look the prettiest right before a storm? This place never seems to shake that look. It's an eerie, quiet beauty, like the woods are holding their breath for whatever's coming for them."
    "It's just the negative ions in the air," I made clear as I began to ramble. "They make everything clearer to the eyes, especially right before a storm. It's kind of an odd science, negative is good and positive is bad. The positive ions, the kations, are the ones that dull everything, make it all feel less alive. Just ignore them. The world will always find a way to be brilliant again. Sometimes, it just takes a beautiful storm for us to realize that we need to forget the bad vibes, forget about all those kations."
    In