I now reveal to you...dun dun duuunnn.....The Orion excerpt! This scene is one of my all-time favorites! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Another writer and I are co-authoring this trilogy. I am very excited about getting it published, but the rough draft was just that—rough. So editing will take longer than it did with my other works. Still, we are diligently working on it, so don't lose hope! We will try not to. :)
~Anastasia
P.S. Just so you know: Jayd and Roy are two of the coolest, most amusing characters of all time. Just so you know. Their relationship is awesome.
Excerpt for ‘The Orion: The Deadlands’
“Lying, deceitful, betraying, freak, no-good slobs of society!”
“Rotten, fish-faced, ignorant, stupid, flimsy-limbed, gutter-worthy, horse-mouthed, buffoons!”
“ALRIGHT!” A soldier yelled, grabbing his ears. “Both of you shut your mouths before I permanently seal them!”
Roy struggled in the ropes the military had put him in. Behind him was Jayd, who was tied with him, back to back.
Roy had woken almost an hour after being knocked out to find himself tied with his worst enemy. Their hands were tied together at their backs.
Just touching her made him feel on edge. Not delightfully so, like the feeling he got when fighting. More stressed out, mentally-tortured on edge.
Roy blew upwards, distancing himself as much as he could from Jayd, which wasn’t very much, seeing that they were bound together. He just hoped Will had gotten away. Those men had run after him...
Jayd squirmed behind him. “Remind me why you’re doing this again?” she demanded of the head soldier.
The head soldier, who had been sickly pale ever since seeing Jayd, wrung the barrel of his gun with his hands nervously. “Th-the government... I mean, the dictator said to bring you back to him in chains. H-he said you were to be punished for being defeated by a Lowlander, and for letting failures live, and...” He trailed off, glancing around.
Roy felt Jayd take a deep breath. “That is the stupidest, most imbecilic thing I have ever heard in my entire life. I am the Orion’s best agent, and they’re going to tie me uncomfortably close to this Lowlander because I let him live a couple of times? He didn’t deserve it, I admit, but honestly! He’s spunky enough to fool any of you!”
“Not our problem. We just follow orders,” one brave soldier said. “Talk to Mr. Calhoun about it when we get you there.”
Jayd snorted, slamming against Roy’s back. She had a surprising amount of strength for one who hadn’t eaten in three days. Roy could feel the heat of her annoyance seeping off of her skin and through her clothes.
It was a couple minutes later when the soldiers started falling asleep. They set up a sentry, who stood in front of Roy and Jayd with his back to them.
Jayd squirmed for the umpteenth time.
Roy huffed and glared back at her. “Maybe if you stopped wriggling around so much it wouldn’t be so uncomfortable,” he whispered fiercely.
Roy literally felt her eyes pierce his skull. “Maybe if you hadn’t run off in the first place we wouldn’t even be in this mess,” she shot back.
“Maybe if you hadn’t been so atrocious to be around I wouldn’t have run away.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t rebelled, I wouldn’t have been so atrocious.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t kidnapped me in the first place I wouldn’t have rebelled.”
“Maybe if you weren’t so strapping and handsome and hadn’t gotten in the way of the law I wouldn’t have kidnapped you.” Jayd’s voice dripped with ridicule.
“Maybe if you and the Orion hadn’t been such obnoxious idiots I wouldn’t have gotten in the way of you trying to steal an innocent boy from his mother.”
Jayd pressed against his back, turning her head so her mouth was right by his ear. “I had nothing to do with the rules of the Orion, no matter what sort of delusion you have conjured. I follow orders so I won’t be killed.” There was a bit of ironic sarcasm in the last line she spoke, as if it were a known fact.
“But you enjoy it,” Roy growled.
“I never said that.”
“Hey!” The soldier on duty jerked around, pointing his gun and whispering. “No talking, both of you!”
Roy could tell Jayd glared at the soldier because he cowered back a little before turning and retreating a few steps away.
Jayd wriggled her arms again. Roy could feel her working her fingers urgently, as if trying to reach something. Roy glanced at the sentry, who was a couple feet away, back turned to them, staring off into the woods.
“What are you doing?” Roy dared to breath to her.
Jayd’s hair brushed against his cheek as she turned her head, looking down her arm. Roy winced and rubbed his face against his shoulder. “I have a knife hidden in my sleeve,” she said, so quietly that Roy barely heard her. “But...I can’t...reach it...” Her fingers scratched against his as she worked them desperately. “See if you can’t get it.” Then, a hint of the mocking tone crept into her whisper. “Though I doubt you are intelligent enough to do that much.”
Roy grunted something nasty under his breath. He gathered up an insane amount of courage to wrench his hand up Jayd’s sleeve and fish around until he felt the cool steel of a blade. He grabbed the tip between two of his fingers and slowly worked it out, pushing it into one of Jayd’s slender hands.
“Intelligent enough, unfortunately,” Roy growled over his shoulder.
He thought he saw the faintest flicker of a smile on her face out of the corner of his eye, but then she turned her head. Roy felt the blade slip between their wrists; the tip nicked the inside of his arm, but he didn’t say anything. He glanced fervently at the sentry, who was cleaning his gun with his shirt absently, as Jayd began to saw through their bonds.
Roy felt sudden relief as the first bond loosened, then the second. The ropes fell on the ground between them. The two pulled away from each other quickly as if they never wanted to touch each other again. Roy rubbed his wrists and silently got up, keeping his eyes on the sentry. He snuck forward two steps and grabbed the soldier from behind around the mouth to silence his cry of fear and bashed the back of his head, dropping his limp body.
Jayd was brushing the snow off of her, still holding the long, thin knife when Roy turned. “Trying to impress me?” she sneered in a whisper, one eyebrow arched over her twinkling, slanted eye. Her entire face radiated contempt and malice. Suddenly, Roy stiffened, afraid for a split moment that he had caused his own demise. He had freed the girl who would kill him instantly if she so chose; he had even given her a knife to do it with!
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