By N. E. Shaw
When morning finally did come, Ash's excitement was replaced with quiet anticipation. She said something about her insides hurting, but Andros explained she was only nervous.
Now the two of them stood outside the cave amidst dozens of women and men, who wore orange jumpsuits and carried powerful weaponry. No way would he let them come near her with those things. Only Leis and the scientists were allowed close.
"Is she ready?" Leis asked as he approached the pair. Andros looked at her, dressed in a desert-toned environment suit and playing with her very own palmlight. "Ash, you ready?"
She looked up brightly. "Ready."
Leis was taken aback, but showed it as little as possible. He gestured toward the formation of guards. "If you'll take your places please..."
Slowly, the swarm of people filtered into the darkness of the caves.
Andros kept Ash with him the whole time, but once again her mind went elsewhere, taking in everything that passed before her senses. The palmlight hung from its cord at her side. She didn't seem to need it to get the full experience.
"We are approaching the cocoon chamber," announced Leis, even though they were fully aware of it. Moist rock walls slid past until the chamber opened out before them.
"Take a look, Ash," Andros encouraged. She mutely complied, drifting towards the four cocoons with senses flared. Andros was spellbound as he watched her interact with them, prodding their rubbery surface with her hands. The guards waited in a protective semi-circle, their own senses on alert. Finally Leis broke the silence by crunching over to Andros and murmuring to him, "Do the cocoons appear any different to you?"
Andros took a look, then nodded. "Yes, they seem more brittle than before."
He kept his voice low so as not to disturb things. "When Ash is finished examining them, I would like to check your freinds' life signs. Perhaps they are almost ready to be freed."
With a silent nod, Andros moved forward and reached out his hand. Ash jumped at his touch. "The scientists want to look too. Come over here and wait for them ok?"
"Look," she said, ignoring his request and pointing to the cocoon above them. Behind the membrane was Ashley. "She looks like you doesn't she?" Andros said. Ash only nodded and let herself be lead away.
The scientists moved in, unholstering a wide array of probes and testing devices. They poked and jabbed and monitored, recording every bit of information they could, and comparing it with what Andros had learned before. For his part, Andros waited impatiently, clenching and unclenching his fists while they came up with an answer. Above, the Rangers slept, oblivious to it all.
Finally one woman in a white coat turned to address them all. "The Power Rangers are in stable health and are almost completely free of the cocoon's support system." A sense of relief washed through those assembled. "We estimate they can be cut down in a matter of hours."
"Excellent, Doctor Pajot," Leis praised proudly. "It shall be done. Meanwhile, Ash may spend as much time as she wants with them, correct?"
They all looked around for Ash, who hadn't been heard from in a few minutes. She was standing at the edge of the guard circle, a pained look on her face.
"Ash, what's wrong?" asked Andros, starting towards her reflexively. But to his surprise she shrank back from him. The guards gave way.
"What is wrong with her?" Leis wanted to know. He watched in puzzlement as she wraped both arms across her abdomen, and gave a long whimper of discomfort.
Alarm gripped the Red Ranger's heart. "Hold her," he said. "Something's making her sick." But before anyone got close again, she bolted like a rabbit, dashing into the dark of the next tunnel.
"Ash, no!!" he shouted after her.
"Follow her, quickly!" Leis ordered. The guards gathered themselves up and tramped in formation into the dark.
The caves began to ring with voices shouting her name. "Ash! Where are you? Don't hide from us, please!" Deeper and deeper they searched, fanning out into every passage and chamber that was big enough for them to fit through.
While all this went on, Andros ran into Doctor Pajot, the short, redhaired scientist from before. She pulled him aside and looked him straight in the eye.
"Red Ranger, you mentioned in your report about a superfluous organ; the stomach chamber Ash does not use."
"Yes, what about it?" he answered distractedly. A million worries were clouding his mind at the moment, he could just see Ash taking a fall of the lake cliff and splitting her head open on the bottom.
"Did you do a detailed study of what the stomach could do?"
"No, I didn't. There wasn't time"
"Well it's obviously the area that's giving her trouble. You saw her hug it protectively just before she ran off."
"Well as soon as we find her, we can figure it out. How does that sound?" His sharp tone made Pajot scowl.
But the scowl vanished when a shout went up from the point-man. "Sirs, we've found her! A chamber just ahead!"
Andros forgot about the doctor and pushed past everyone in his way. He ducked through a low passage and came up in a little round room that formed a dead-end for them. Ash was curled against the far wall.
"Ash...hey, are you okay...?" He dropped to a crouch and tried to come near, but her sharp glance told him no; no one was to venture closer. Leis arrived at that moment to see what was going on. "Red Ranger, is she..?"
"Shhh!" Andros hissed. He was looking her over from top to bottom. Her whole form trembled as she lay on the ground, sweat sheening her brow and whimpers of pain coming from her throat. She still hugged her stomach, as though trying to hold something in. Perhaps Doctor Pajot had been onto something after all.
"Ash listen to me," Andros soothed. "Everything's gonna be ok. I know you're scared, but we're gonna take care of you..."
A louder cry made them all cringe. Pain rippled visibly through the girl's body. She had no understanding of why she was in such anguish, but Andros had no power to stop it. None of them did.
Something began to happen, and Ash's whimpers became strangled screams. Before the group's disturbed eyes, something began pushing its way out from the inside. She fought with it as long as she could, but there came the sound of tearing cloth and flesh, and her face froze in a wide-eyed look of horror. Blood gushed over her arms. Something black, bloodsoaked, and insectoid nosed its way through the rip it had made, and slid out onto the ground dragging strings of flesh with it.
A new venator was born, this time a perfect likeness of its mother.
Horrified and shaking, Andros watched the disgusting birth. Ash was clearly dead now; her lifeless shell lay quiet, never to smile or speak again. Meanwhile the newborn venator found strength in its legs, and got up to crawl around for the first time. It took little notice of the people nearby; it simply did its thing, training its many legs to work in harmony for locomotion. Fluid oozed from its mouthparts as it washed itself of Ash's blood. Andros swallowed the urge to vomit in anguish.
The young venator finally took a glance around, waving its forelegs at the crowd. Ambassador Leis swallowed and took a step away. The guards held their ground, but looked a little green in the face. Doctor Pajot and her team kept clinically composed, but the weight of what had taken place did not escape them. No one tried to console the Red Ranger. He simply locked gazes with the venator and stared it down, eyes full of pain and confusion.
Casually, the venator turned to Ash's corpse, and tore off a piece of flesh with its mouth.
"You son of a bitch...!" Andros cried, unholstering his Astro Blaster.
"No wait!" yelped Doctor Pajot. She restrained Andros's arm. "I know what's happening. This is what was meant to be."
"It can't be..." Andros moaned.
"It is," she replied. "We have seen the entire life cycle now. The venator attacked you and your friends, took samples of your DNA, and used them to clone offspring like Ash and her siblings. They were never meant to be anything but fodder for the young venators growing inside. If not for you, Ash would have simply lain in the cave until this creature hatched. She was never meant to learn, or speak, or interact as you allowed her to do."
It all seemed inconceivably cruel, but it also rang true.
"Your friends in the chamber back there were never in danger. The true offspring always had its clone host to eat. These creatures have taken nothing that wasn't theirs."
Andros finally brought his bitter eyes to rest on her. "That's what they think," he said, and left the chamber in a hurry, shoving past Leis and giving no one a moment more of his time. The Wrorickans were left to listen to the soft sounds of flesh being consumed.