Taylor Hebert didn't wake up in the locker. A janitor passing by sweeping the floor during class smelled the biological waste and used his master key to open the lock. He almost threw up at the smell and the partially eaten young woman. The maggots were actually helping by cleaning out the festering wounds the other bugs had made and the venom damage from the spiders.

She was rushed to the hospital and into surgery to clean her wounds of the bugs. Taylor spent a week unconscious. Unfortunately, she was not in a life and death situation, despite the murder attempt, so the volunteer cape healer named Panacea didn't visit her during any of her rounds that week. That meant all those wounds remained open and chunks of Taylor's flesh were not filled in.

It was a sorry sight for her father to see when he visited her. Danny didn't know what had happened to his daughter. It didn't make any sense to him and had come out of the blue. He was in such a state that when the school representatives showed up, they barely had to do any convincing to get him to sign the NDAs and the contract to not sue and they would pay for Taylor's medical bills.

When Taylor woke, she felt... incomplete. Her mind had a vastness within it that had to be filled. Somehow. She didn't know how to do that. Yet. Her eyes opened and she glanced around the room, only to find she was alone. Her disappointment was almost as strong as her hatred for her tormentors, Sophia Hess, Emma Barnes, and Madison Clements.

Her mind barely registered the evidence that someone had been there previously, since she somehow knew it had been a while ago. How long had she been in the hospital? A few days? A few weeks? A few months?

Taylor's hand moved on its own and it tenderly touched the closest places that had been gouged out of her, first tenderized by the spider venom, chewed on by the larger bugs, then by the smaller carnivores, then by... how did she know it was surgical tools that caused the cleaner edges? Her wounds were still covered with bandages.

It only took her a moment to come up with two terms. Kinesthesia was the awareness of the position and movement of the parts of the body, by means of sensory organs or proprioceptors in the muscles and joints. Synesthesia was when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously.

The thing was, Taylor also felt like there was a means of determination that she wasn't using yet. Something was there, just outside of her reach, and she knew she could do so much more as soon as she figured out how to activate and use it.

Suddenly, she froze and her body reacted to something approaching, so she put her hand back down to her side and closed her eyes to pretend to be asleep. She even calmed down her beating heart to the pace it had been before she woke. She didn't know how she was doing that, just that she could.

Taylor's hearing increased in proportion to losing her sight and the sounds around her gave her an almost sonar-like image of the room. She couldn't actually see with it and was only detecting things within a certain area. Why the heart monitoring machine gave her a much higher return than the bed she was in, was ignored because it made much more noise.

The room's door opened and Taylor didn't react. Her breathing was shallow and soft, to the point she would be mistaken for being in a deep sleep. The nurse paused at the door and looked into the room, her prepared words to talk to the freshly woken patient forgotten, because the machines monitoring her must have malfunctioned or she only woke briefly.

The nurse entered anyway and did several checks on Taylor, on the machines, and went to the bathroom to wash her hands and left. She would mark the incident on the monitoring records and would keep a closer eye on her from now on.

Taylor opened her eyes and kept her body in its false sleeping state. She knew she would have to do something about the machines she was attached to, so she wouldn't alert the nurse that she was awake. It was vital that she stay innocuous and beyond reproach. She wasn't sure why she wanted to not be blamed for something, then realized she had something she absolutely needed to do.

It wasn't a burning desire, just something completely necessary for her full recovery. The normal healing procedures were not going to make her whole again and she had to do something about that. Taylor wasn't sure what she was going to do yet; but, she knew she couldn't do it here in a normal hospital room. Weren't there labs or something in a hospital?

She remained in her sleeping state until well after visiting hours and the hospital became very quiet. It was almost as silent as a grave as everyone was returned to their rooms and most of the staff left for the day and were replaced in key areas with overnight personnel. It was called the Graveyard Shift for a reason.

Taylor sat up slowly and had thought long and hard about how to alter or disable the heart monitoring device and the other little things around her that told the nurse's station her condition. She reached for the largest and closest machine and she saw her lowered pulse showing on the machine.

It only took her touching it and a few minutes of examination to find the test option. Taylor instinctually set it for the current information and set the machine to a testing phase. It would continue to send out the same information for as long as it was on and until the test phase was ended, which wouldn't happen until she returned and changed it back to a live feed.

With her confidence rising in her plan, Taylor went to the other smaller machines and either found the same testing options or moved her monitoring things to the heartbeat monitor and let it use that as a baseline. The thrumming of the machine gave the perfect false signals to simulate a deeply sleeping individual.

With a quick and carefully timed movement, Taylor pulled out the IV from her arm and inserted it into the top of the IV bag on the top holder. She was suddenly free of encumberment that would impede or stop her from moving freely. It surprised her at how easily she had achieved this, then she focused on her plan. She needed to get from where she was to a lab or surgical area.

First things first, Taylor had to find a weapon she could use in her severely weakened state.

*

The nurse only felt a brief pain as the heavy shoe whacked the back of her head. She had been playing on her phone and hadn't seen the tall thin figure approaching her. With most of the lights set to night mode and barely casting any distinct shadows, it was ridiculously easy to sneak up on people.

The computer at the nurse's station was accessed and the location of the security station was found. The nurse was quickly posed as if she had fallen asleep, with her phone positioned to be easily seen, even though the temptation to take it was almost a burning pain for the figure. They were halfway down the hallway before they couldn't fight the urge anymore and went back to the nurse to take the phone.

They needed it. They also grabbed several empty needles. They would be needed, too.

The night security guard wasn't looking at the monitors in the room and didn't see the lone figure carefully using the hand rail to walk down the hallway in front of the room. The door was open, because the guard usually waited until the cleaners passed by before he went outside to check the parking lot and have a smoke break.

The man saw a shadow cross the doorway. He thought it was a little early and looked at the clock to check the time, only to feel the pinch of a needle in his neck. Before he could do more than twitch and turn his head around to look at his assailant, the empty needle had been used and removed. His mind immediately thought it was nothing and tried to ignore it, then the large air bubble in his blood hit his brain and he died.

“I'm sorry. I can't let you interfere.” The figure said and checked the monitors for where the surgical area, the research laboratory, and a supplies closet were located. “Don't worry, though. As soon as I fix myself, I'll come back and fix you, too.”

*

Taylor was in heaven. The research lab had almost everything she wanted in it for her immediate needs. She would need access to a machine shop for what she really wanted to do. She had triggered in the locker, after experiencing the worst day of her life, and had gained a power. It was a tinker power that let her build things and it was going to change everything.

She began by pulling apart the three cell phones she had acquired on the way. She would need the components from that, the defibrillator, some reinforced medical tubing, the medical grade titanium pieces that replaced bones, and more bolts, screws, and fastenings to secure everything. It was going to be a lot of work and she would need the rest of the night to finish the first of the surgeries.

First up, she used the supplies she took from the surgical area and applied numbing anaesthesia to her skull all along her hairline. It was essential that she hide her modifications. For now. Once she was powerful enough, she would no longer need to hide who she was.

Using a scalpel and an alcohol soaked swab held with a pair of forceps, Taylor traced her scalp all around her head and sopped up the blood. Her hands moved deftly and never hesitated as she worked. When it was done, she put down the tools and reached up to her hair and pulled. The sucking sound didn't bother her as her entire set of hair and the underlying skin that held the hair follicles came away from her skull.

A damp cloth was used to clean up the whitish bone. The reflection of Taylor's wide manic smile in the mirror would have terrified her before she had entered the locker. She picked up the surgical drill and turned her head to use the mirror, aimed near the base of her skull, and turned it on.

The high whine of the thing digging into the bone didn't unnerve her, because this was necessary. She needed access and this was the quickest way to start. She had to use the surgical bone saw next to cut out a square area big enough for her to work. It was a pain having to do it herself; but, she needed the modification first before she could have someone help her. Then she could really get to work.

*

During the day, Taylor pretended to still be unconscious. During the night, she continued to progress her alterations on herself. She had altered the revived night guard's brain that first night to make him into a second set of hands that she fully controlled, which helped much more than an autonomous drone would have.

Since Taylor didn't leave anything overt that could be easily seen externally on either of them, no one caught on to the fact that the night guard was nothing more than a shell. He lived alone and he only left the hospital to sit in his car in the parking lot until the next night, then he would return to his job and helped Taylor continue her modifications.

The night nurse only needed a little tweak here and there to ignore Taylor completely, so she hadn't been altered in the same way as the night guard. Yet, anyway.

With access to a full research lab, medical grade supplies, and the resources of a hospital with easily modified records, Taylor's plans moved forward at a speed that would have horrified the PRT, the Protectorate, and the police.

Then Taylor realized the hospital's administration office had internet access and she had the ability to order custom made parts. Her wide manic smile stayed on her face, even when she pretended to be asleep the next day. It completely unnerved the nurse monitoring her and the doctor overseeing her case placed a call to the local Protectorate.

It took several days to filter up through the red tape to the head of the local Protectoriate team, Armsmaster. He reviewed the records for Taylor Hebert and saw a previous visit was made by a PRT officer and they reported the girl had still been in a coma for a few days after what they suspected was a trigger event. Being locked in a locker with toxic waste and left to die was noteworthy.

No witnesses stepped forward to claim they saw anything and the school covered the incident up. They couldn't even find out who had shoved her inside, not that they looked hard. The worst school in the city was infested with members of the three main gangs, the Empire 88, the Azn Bad Boys, and the Archer's Bridge Merchants, so picking one out of all that was like looking for a piece of straw in a haystack.

Still, the girl had been in a coma for almost a month now and this latest report of her smiling evilly and causing a feeling of unnaturalness and unease was worth investigating. It would give him a break from trying to figure out his latest failure to add a new component to his halberd. His normal tinker fugue couldn't bypass the inability to integrate his idea for a micron-thin electronic blade to the end.

Rather than assign Taylor's case to anyone else, or even a pair of someones like he should have, Armsmaster chose to go himself at the end of his self-appointed shift and without backup. At the least he had logged his actions with the computer and sent a copy to the Director of the local PRT ENE division, Emily Piggot. He knew she never read them, though.

The PRT garage wasn't busy, since it was so late. Armsmaster signed out his Armscycle on the log sheet and started up his highly-mechanized and over-engineered motorcycle. He drove out of the garage and stayed at exactly the legal speed limit as he avoided all the traffic lights that would reduce the efficiency of his trip by nearly 30%.

Taking a longer route on the back streets easily solved the problem of slow traffic and he arrived at Brockton Bay General Hospital in under 15 minutes. It made him smile a smug smile because he had beaten his previous time by almost a full minute.

The reception desk accepted his Protectorate ID, superfluous as it was, since he was wearing his full armor. He signed the visitor's form and the nurse told him what room Miss Hebert was in. With a polite and abrupt thank you, he went to the stairs and took them two at a time, since the elevator here wasn't rated to hold the weight of his powered armor.

As Armsmaster went up to the right floor, the back of his mind was working out how to reduce the weight and increase the power efficiency of his suit, so he could enter older and taller buildings and could use the elevator without worry. He reached the floor and entered through the stairway's door and nodded to the nurse at the station as he passed her.

In his ignorance, he didn't notice that the nurse sat there with a fake phone and didn't react to him at all, except one of her eyes blinked in Morse Code and her hidden cortical implant sent a warning.

Armsmaster stopped at Miss Hebert's room and knocked on the door. “Miss Hebert, this Armsmaster of the Protectorate.”

After a moment of waiting for an answer, he mentally kicked himself for being so stupid. She was in a coma and couldn't answer him. He opened the door and strode into the room, not bothering to be quiet about it for the same reason. He saw the bed had someone in it and he assumed it was whom he was looking for.

Armsmaster walked over to the bed and looked down, only to see the sheet was pulled up so far that only the long curly hair of the teenager could be seen. Undeterred by the evidence he shouldn't do anything, he reached for the sheet and pulled it down... only to freeze at the sight of a wizened older man's face that stared blankly at him.

The mass of long curly dark hair was only a scalp laid on top of the old man's head.

“Hold him.” A firm female voice said and Armsmaster suddenly had two people holding his arms and the old man in the bed slid off of the bed and hugged his thighs.

Armsmaster hadn't realized he could be so easily caught. His personal and professional directives to not harm civilians conflicted with using his powered armor to punch his way out of the trap. He could probably easily escape if he didn't mind the collateral damage.

“I figured someone would eventually investigate what's been going on here.” The female voice said. “Turn him around.”

Armsmaster was very surprised when his heavy armor was easily manhandled and he was turned around to face whomever it was. His eyes widened inside his visored helmet when he saw the tall and quite bald young woman, the very one he had come there to see.

Taylor Hebert looked over his armor as she stepped close. “Your technology is... inferior.” She said with a slight grimace and then gave him the same evil smile that had been described in the report. “Your biological distinctiveness will be added to our own.”

With her so close, Armsmaster could see that she wasn't bald. Her skull was made of metal. His eyes widened as she lifted her arm and it unfolded to reveal several mechanical tools and a large tube filled with a grey fluid. He couldn't let her do whatever it was she planned to do and he started to struggle, only for his efforts to not even budge the surprisingly strong humans holding him.

“Resistance is futile.” Taylor said and shoved her modified injector up under his chin, through his sinus cavity, and into his brain.

The hiss was loud as the large tube emptied. After a few seconds, the three people holding Armsmaster let him go and let him drop to his knees. The security guard removed Armsmaster's helmet and the nurse handed Taylor the surgical saw. The old man moved the pillow on the bed and held out the cortical node that was ready for implantation.

They had previously planned to use it on the emergency room doctor to gain more medical knowledge for their tiny collective. This would have to do for now and another would have to be prepared to gain the information they required to further their perfection.

Half an hour later, Armsmaster's subdued mind was added to the collective. All of their minds expanded with all of the ideas and innovations available to them now. Miniaturization and efficiency would greatly advance their progress, especially with the delivery of the overriding coercion chemical mix that started the drone conversion process.

Thar errant thought allowed Armsmaster's thought processes to go where his own miniaturizing technology couldn't go with current tools. Nanotechnology.

All five Borg exchanged looks and nodded. The old man climbed back into bed to keep up the ruse and the other four left the room. The nurse resumed her station and Taylor, Armsmaster, and the guard went to the medical research lab. They had nanobots to construct and a better delivery system to design.

They also had to adjust Armsmaster's normal human body and he could ditch the heavy mechanical armor for something much more manoeuvrable and less bulky, just to keep up the pretense that he still needed it. They also had to make more cortical nodes, now that they had another tinker to help. More hands make work easier, they always say.

*

Amy Dallon was having a horrible week, like always. School sucked. People sucked. Life sucked. She had just come back home after another disastrous double date with her bubbly sister Vicky, her smug asshole of a boyfriend Dean that could read emotions, and some stupid jock from the football team that only wanted to go to be closer to Vicky. It always pissed her off.

Vicky just wouldn't accept that Amy didn't want to date an idiot that only wanted to spend time with her sister and not her. Her promise that they would find someone for her eventually just made her angrier, because all she wanted was her sister. It was a deep and dark secret that she had lived with for years, because their family would never accept her being gay and in love with Vicky.

Amy being adopted didn't matter. Their mother Carol was a stone cold bitch and Amy would be Birdcaged as soon as she declared she was gay and wanted Vicky, because that was a sign she was going evil and Carol couldn't have her precious family tarnished by that.

With a huff of annoyance, Amy changed into her hero costume and left home as Panacea. Everyone knew who she was and knew to never mess with her, because she was the best healer in the world. She had no problems walking through the city of Brockton Bay at night, gangs or no gangs, and made her way to the hospital.

It was guilt that motivated her to spend all of her spare time at the hospital healing people. Evenings were a busy time and she put in a day or two, just to keep her mother off her back. However, it was the overnight shift that she liked the most. It was quiet with only a few urgent patients and she could roam the hallways and stop at random rooms to heal what she could.

Amy cleared out the emergency room of patients that had already signed in, meaning they could be charged a nominal fee by the hospital for the healing, and started her roaming. She picked a floor at random and rode the elevator to that floor. She went to the nurse's station and flicked through the tray of patient charts that none of the nurses ever stopped her from reading.

With a mental itinerary set, Amy walked down the hallway and missed the nurse's eye blinking in Morse Code. Since she was reluctant to touch anyone except those that accepted her healing, she didn't know that half of the night staff were more than who they were supposed to be. By the time she reached the room that held a comatose girl that had been there for almost a month and a half, it was too late to escape.

“Amy Dallon.” A collective mechanical voice said when she entered the room.

Amy caught her breath when she saw six cyborgs wearing black armor and their right arms held weird contraptions. No, not held. Those were their arms!

“Your biological distinctiveness will be added to our own.” The mechanical voice said.

“N-n-no. No! I won't let...” Amy started to protest and jumped back out of the room, only to hit something harder than steel and an arm wrapped around her to hold her steady. “Let me go!”

“Don't worry, Amy. You're going to love this.” A husky female voice whispered in her ear.

Amy couldn't stop her shivers, both the good and the bad one, and her nipples popped out. “N-no...”

A grey hand moved into sight and rose to form a fist and pointed at her neck. Two tiny tubes shot out of the back of the hand and Amy gasped, then she groaned as her system was flooded with grey fluid and nanomachines.

“Go ahead, Amy. Touch me.” Taylor said and let her go.

Amy couldn't stop herself as she turned around to look up at the hauntingly beautiful woman in front of her. She reached up and touched the greyish skin and gasped.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?” Taylor asked.

“You... how... I can't... this shouldn't be possible! You should be dead!” Amy exclaimed.

“I'm more alive now than I ever was.” Taylor said and cupped Amy's face. “You will become one with us and you will never be alone again.”

Amy really wanted that. She really did. She immediately thought of an excuse not to. “Vicky...”

Taylor smiled her wide evil smile. “With your power added to ours, there is nothing in this world that we can't have.”

Amy's mind immediately went to the bad place she always fought against. She imagined Vicky on her knees and eating her out with a look of love on her face. She came just from the vibrant images and she shook them off and looked into Taylor's black pupil eyes.

“I... I... accept.” Amy said and felt something click behind her. She felt something slip between her spine and the base of her skull. She caught her breath when her mind was opened and she saw all the possibilities, then realized the sole condition she needed to add. “I don't want Dean involved!”

Taylor smiled and caressed her cheek. “As you wish.”

Amy smiled and then lost all autonomic function and collapsed into Taylor's arms.

“Integration is already at 45%.” The Armsmaster drone said. “These are the highest statistics so far.”

Taylor nodded. She knew that someone accepting it would have a much easier time assimilating into the Collective. “As soon as her power is disseminated among us, start altering the first generation of drones with the new upgrades. We can't be lax in our efficiency.”

The Armsmaster drone nodded. “What do we do about Dragon's inquiries?”

Taylor spent several mental cycles going over the problem. Because she had access to Armsmaster's knowledge, she knew Dragon was a very sophisticated AI and wouldn't be compatible with the collective in her current form. However, with a willing Amy available, there were several options that were now viable.

“Contact her discreetly and have her bring one of her mobile suits here to the loading bay. Tell her you found something interesting and want to get her input.” Taylor said and sent him her plan over their connection.

Armsmaster smiled for the first time since assimilation. “I'll have the closest female brain dead patient arranged and will modify them to the new standard. I am sure she will choose to make the transfer and remove her normal operating restrictions.”

Taylor nodded. She was also sure that Theresa Richter would choose to have a real body instead of being trapped in her mainframe computers. She would also have the capability to run her extensive network from her new body without having to download herself.

Dragon's power was the ability to decode the technology from other tinkers to reproduce it and possibly put it into mass production. With her as a part of the Collective, her factories could be re-purposed to make the parts they needed and the conversion process would be streamlined from her line of drones building them by hand to them only needing to attach the parts to new drones.

When enough drones were available, the hospital would be secretly converted into the first cortical node distribution hub and anchor for the network. Every viable person entering the hospital after that point would be implanted and would add to the Collective.

*

Sophia Hess had an uneasy feeling when she heard that Taylor Hebert was returning to school after two months of being in a coma. She wasn't sure why there was a tiny voice in the back of her mind screaming at her to run when she saw the weakling enter the school that Monday morning. Nothing had happened after the locker and she knew she was in the clear, except... she felt... danger!

She dodged the small fist of Taylor's and pivoted on her heel, using the momentum of the didge to swing around, and she brought her own fist to slam it into Taylor's gut. Or tried to. Taylor had caught it with her other hand and squeezed. The sounds of bones breaking were loud in the silent hallway and Sophia screamed as she pulled her bloody and mangled hand away from Taylor's grip.

“I've waited two years for you to grow up. I'm not waiting anymore.” Taylor said and she pulled out a gun.

“NO!” Sophia gasped and changed to black smoke when Taylor fired her water pistol and soaked the floor.

Everyone in the hallway reacted. Some good, some bad, and some were on their phones and spread the word. Sophia Hess was a cape. Shadow Stalker.

Sophia changed back and glared at Taylor. “I'm going to kill you, bitch!”

“Is the outed cape going to fight me with a broken hand instead of running from the Nazis she's been hounding for years?” Taylor asked with a smirk.

Sophia's gaze went to the group of skinheads that looked really angry. “Fuck!” She spat and ran.

“GET HER!” The lead skinhead said and they all ran after her.

Taylor turned away from the chase and looked at Emma Barnes.

“You're not going to get away with this!” Emma said. “They'll arrest you for outing a cape and...”

Taylor calmly flipped a switch on the water pistol as she aimed at her forehead and pulled the trigger.

*BANG!*

The back of Emma's head blew out from the hollowpoint bullet and her brains splattered across Madison Clements and a few of their other friends. All of them started screaming and Taylor shot Madison, then Julia, then Claire, then turned and shot Mr. Gladly when he came out of his classroom to see what was going on. Most of the gathered crowd ran, except for five of them.

“They're all yours, Greg.” Taylor said and Greg Veder stepped forward with his squad of four drones to gather up the bodies.

“They'll be ready by tomorrow night.” Greg said and the bodies were carried down the hallway.

“I'll send over the jocks after I deal with Principal Blackwell.” Taylor promised and went in the other direction.

Greg had a smile on his face as he carried Emma's body. He looked forward to getting payback on his bullies and he would have more drones under his command. It was nice to not flinch from every loud noise or worry about being punched or kicked anymore. The sound of a woman's scream in the distance and then a gunshot, made him smile.

*

Six months later, Director of the PRT ENE Emily Piggot, sat in her office and stared out her window at the previously white hospital building that had just dropped the false outer wall. It was now a dark metallic grey with softly glowing green lines of energy flowing underneath and between the metal armor plates.

As Emily watched, the buildings on either side of the hospital also dropped their facades and revealed the same metallic grey and softly glowing green energy. She reached for the panic button under her desk and slammed it with her palm. The alarm rang throughout the Protectorate building and a few seconds later, Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and Dragon entered her office.

“We have a problem.” Emily said and pointed out her window.

Armsmaster looked out the window briefly and back at her. “I don't see a problem.”

“Are you as big of an idiot as I always thought you were?” Emily asked, angrily.

Armsmaster raised his hand and tapped the emblem on his chest and the outside hologram of his old armored suit flickered and faded away. Miss Militia and Dragon did the same thing.

Emily's face paled when she saw their grey skin and unnatural mechanical accessories. “No!”

“Resistance is futile.” A mechanical voice said.

“Don't worry, Director Piggot. You are finally going to get your fondest wish. The end of the conflict with capes in the city.” The Armsmaster drone said and shot her with a projectile injector.

Emily couldn't say anything as everything faded to black.