By N. E. Shaw
With a cough and a splash, Andros sputtered awake. A slight movement had caused water to gush over his face, and at first he couldn't remember why. Then he smelled the dark, coppery smell of the water, and remembered he was in the cave, in the lake, at the bottom of the cliff.
He had been standing at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the glassy, tranquil cave-lake below, when he heard a noise above him. He forgot the idle chatter coming from his communicator, and looked up to see a dark shape on the cieling. Suddenly, it fell, and he glimpsed the scorpion-like body just before it latched onto his face.
He was so startled that he forgot where he was, and took a staggering step forward. Unfortunately, there was no ground to meet his foot, and he fell from the precipice into the shallow lake 15 feet below.
Little did he realize, the fall was probably the best thing to have happened to him. He lost consciousness upon impact with the bottom, but the water must have made the creature let go, for now it was nowhere in sight. At the moment, Andros was lying on his back in the water, his rear resting on the bottom, and the padding of his environment suit keeping his head afloat. He sat up slowly, feeling his back muscles protest. The palm light was a dull glow underwater at his side.
So slowly, carefully, Andros hauled himself out of the water and began searching for a way back up the cliff. Good fortune provided him with an easy set of hand and footholds, and soon he was standing on the precipice again, looking down at where he'd been. Water dripped from the tip of his nose and fell with a tiny plip back into the lake. Those ripples would take a long time to die down.
Andros thought of his friends. How long had he been unconscious? Were they still looking for him? His communicator was silent, but perhaps it was just inoperative after being underwater. Picking up his scanner (which lay on the ground where he dropped it), he began to search for them, and found their life readings gathered in a large vault near his position.
Perhaps they had regrouped to plan a search pattern? He hadn't been answering his communicator, obviously. They must have grown concerned.
Well, there was no need for that. He was alright, and would simply go join them and they would all finally get to go home. Boots squishing, he trudged off towards the chamber to meet up with them.
But as he neared, he grew worried because he couldn't hear any voices. No scanners bleeped, no pacing boots scuffled. What were they doing in there?
He snuck quietly closer, peeking around the curve of the passageway....
..and to his horror, he found them. Their sleeping faces looked out at him from inside huge suspended cocoons.
This chamber was oblong, with the row of cocoons hung along one wall. They were plastered up there with a thready membrane the color of milk. The Rangers seemed asleep, with their arms trapped at their sides and a thin cord running from a fluid sac to to each of their mouths. Andros was mortified, and ran to the one closest to him.
Ashley was suspended in this one. Andros took hold of the slippery membrane and pulled, but it would not tear loose. He tugged and ripped, even risking a shot with his blaster, but could not free the Yellow Ranger. The cocoon was frustratingly tough, and he had no high-powered cutting tools to use. One by one, he took a stab at each of the cocoons, trying his damnedest to break them. But it was no use.
In his desperation, Andros didn't notice the tiny scrabbling sound approaching from above. Gripping the stone with it's spidery legs, the creature stalked towards its prey, confident that the four already captured would not be disturbed.
With a cry of frustration, Andros retreated from his friends. He could do nothing to save them. It was almost too much to bear that they were in danger and beyond his reach.
For brief moment he fell silent, trying to make his brain think. That was when he heard it-- the tiny sound of crawling. Andros froze and did not look up, remembering that that was what the thing wanted him to do. Instead, he unholstered his blaster, turned, and threw himself into a shoulder roll along the ground. He came up a few feet away and raised the blaster for a blind shot at the cieling where the noise had come from. Sparks flew and chunks of rock were flung everywhere, but when the smoke cleared away, something else had fallen to the ground...
Lying on its back, the foot-long, six-legged, scorpion like creature lay stunned and flailing like an overturned turtle. Andros stood over it, feeling a vengeful urge in his trigger-finger; but he could do better than that. He needed this thing. It might hold the key to rescuing his friends.
So he opened a pocket on his pantleg and withdrew a thick plastic specimen bag. He put it over his hand, grasped the struggling creature, and then turned the bag inside-out so that it was trapped inside.
"You're mine," he told it, holding it up to the light. Then with one last, worried glance at his friends, Andros left the chamber and made his way out of the cave of horrors.