The Steel Queen

A Worm Fanfiction

Chapter 1: Big Things

I woke up to the small sounds of machines I couldn't place. I refused to open my eyes, trying to fall back into the safe abyss of sleep. I was so, so tired.

The three… my locker… the smell...

I remembered, and my eyes flew open, my hands flailing around for my glasses until I clumsily found them. I was in a shabby little hospital room, the beeping belonging to an heart monitor at the side of my bed, with wires running to a number of sensors stuck against my skin.

Impractical. Make the sensors smaller, wireless, and flat to lower chance of them being accidentally torn off. Why not just make them subdermal? Manufacture them out of a material that would degrade…

I stomped the brakes on my thoughts before it could go any further. That was weird. Really weird. That wasn't… Those thoughts didn't belong to me. Where was Dad? The beeping picked up tempo a little bit. A reaction to my stress?

Needs a better way of communicating information. I could break up the individual…

STOP! Stop. Where was all of this coming from? I didn't feel like I was myself right now. Where was Dad? Why wasn't he here? Aren't there supposed to be nurses at least?

Tracking biosignatures…

PLEASE make it stop. Whatever it is, make it go away. Make it end. This wasn't me! I'm normal. This wasn't me. Did the hospital do something to me or… something in the locker?

Everywhere I looked, every thought I had was suddenly invaded. They were… ideas, blueprints, answers to problems I wasn't looking for. I tried looking away from it all, staring at the bland piece of wall to my right, but that didn't stop it. I was suddenly hyper-aware of how I could reinforce it with stacked nano-carbon sheets. Interchange the paint on the wall with a micro-level teleporter. Demolish the whole thing entirely with a controlled explosion, the chemical makeup for a reimagined C4 becoming crystal clear. I would need less than an ounce.

The thoughts that weren't my own were calm, and the contrast to my own panic only elevated me higher. The beeping got faster. I tried just keeping my eyes shut, but the thoughts just started getting more intense, more fleshed out.

"Ms. Hebert!" I heard a voice call, opening my eyes to see a nurse, looking frantic herself, barge through the door to the room. "Are you in pain! What's wrong?!"

She had a face that looked like it never stopped working. She used concealer, but the dark rings under her eyes were hard to hide, and worry lines were already standing out on her young face. I liked her instantly.

She rushed to my side, head snapping to the heart monitor, reading everything it had to say. She let the tension in her posture relax when she couldn't see any obvious wounds.

I tried to speak, but my mouth was dry, and it took me a second to form the words.

"I… I don't know what's happening." I finally managed, my voice sounding small even to me.

"You're okay Taylor. You're at Briargrove hospital. You've been unconscious here for three days. Calm down, sweetheart." The nurse reached out her hand to take hold on mine, and it was a little reassuring.

"Where's my dad?"

"He was here this morning, but he said he had to get to work. Hospital bills, you know?" She smiled, trying to make it a lighthearted joke, but it hit me like a punch in the gut. Three days? How much was that going to cost? How could we afford that? A brand new tear opened in my heart, and just to prove it couldn't be outdone, the thoughts came back to taunt her.

Nanites the size of red blood cells that could boost cellular reproduction. Robots that could go inside the body and perform surgeries, suture wounds. Endless lines of computer code.

The nurses smile shattered as the heart monitor chirped faster.

"Taylor, sweetie, I'm going to go call your dad, see if he can get off of work," She stated, never taking her eyes of the machine. "But before I can do that, I need you to calm down. Deep breaths. Just squeeze my hand if you need to."

It took two tries, but I forced myself to calm down, pushing those thoughts far away. The… ideas… tried to speak up, but I clamped down on them with all the willpower I had left, and they backed off. Still there, but in the background. Like a song that you could hear, but didn't listen to.

She gave one more look at the heart monitor before seeming a little more satisfied. "You're safe here. Promise. I'll be right back." She rushed out of the room, leaving me alone again. What did I look like to her? A scared little girl? Scared shitless by a hospital room? I must look pathetic, but she was gone now. I was all alone with my thoughts.

What was this? This thing in my head. Even now, I could feel it straining against its reins. I didn't dare give it an inch.

The answer was so obvious and so scary that I tried to force myself to deny it. It could be a number of different things, like that article about the kid who lost half his brain in a car accident and instantly became a musical prodigy, but he was likely one too, now that I thought about it.

A parahuman…

And the thoughts… what were the people called? Techies? Technos? I had never been the superhero groupie that some others were, and my… ability?... wasn't giving any answers here. I lessened my grip, but the answers it provided weren't answers at all, so I sealed it shut again.

This was good though. This meant there were others. Ones who could help me. Ones who understood what I was going through. Maybe they had ways to manage it all and I could learn. Should I go straight to the PRT? Should I tell Dad? What would he think?

No, I couldn't tell him. A hero's life wasn't safe. He knew it, I knew it, and if he found out, he wound't understand. He wouldn't even entertain the thought of me being a hero, not with the constant endbringer attacks wiping out a couple hundred capes every year, on top of the usual occupational hazards.

And what if the PRT wasn't my friend? What if it was just another system? Another Emma? Something just like school that allowed for people like Emma, Sophia, and Madison to go unpunished. Maybe being sent to the hospital would finally open their eyes. Probably not. If a year and a half could go by without anyone really noticing, then it wouldn't change now. If I knew Emma, then she was already manipulating the entire student body against testifying for me. Twisting the story to make it seem like it was my own fault. It's been... what did she say? Three days? I was hopeful, but speculating didn't really matter.

I would see soon enough.

Dad made it to the hospital in 20 minutes, so he must have been doing some serious speeding. He probably didn't even give it a second thought, but seeing how much he cared made everything a little better. No matter what the world had to throw at me, he'd be there. I was lucky to have him, and it warmed my heart just a little bit.

"Taylor!" He rushed towards me when he came into my line of sight. The nurses must have kept him from running all the way from the parking lot. He didn't hesitate to wrap my in a bear hug, which was admittedly awkward with me sitting in the bed and him standing, but I wasn't complaining.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here when you woke up" He apologized as he let go. Another punch to the gut. The whole reason he couldn't be here was that I was accruing hospital bills as we spoke. I wouldn't let those thoughts take this moment away from me though. The "techy" thoughts were mercifully staying relatively quiet, but suppressing them was creating an ever-building pressure in the back of my head. It was beyond uncomfortable, but it was worth it.

"Dad, it's ok. I'm ok." In the physical sense at least. My head could have been a hospital visit on it's own.

The nurse took that opportunity to poke her head into our moment.

"She looks to be on the mend for the most part. Just small abrasions, but the environment she got them in makes us wary of infection and that means you'll be staying with us for at least two more days." The nurse said it like it was great news, but when Dad turned back to me, I could see the brand new hurt in his eyes. Apparently the reference to the locker was signal enough to get serious.

"Thank you, for everything" Dad replied, and nurse got the hint, giving a quick nod as she left the room and closed the door behind her.

"Taylor, I can see that look in your eye. We aren't worried about money right now. The school will be handling the bill." He replied, and my mind spun with the implications.

"Does that mean…"

"No, kiddo, it doesn't." Dad cut me off, his anger slipping into his tone, but it wasn't directed at me. "This is a buy-off for damages. The school can't find any kids to testify for what exactly happened, so this is all you get."

Of course. Of fucking course. Fuck them. Every single last one of them. Not one person could have stood up for the bullied girl. Fuck. Them.

And then I thought about how I would have to go back. How I would have to somehow take everything that had happened at that hell of a school and just act like it didn't happen, because doing anything else would only make it worse. The trio pounced on any sign that one of their humiliations was getting to me more than others, but I don't think they really needed my reaction to guess how much this affected me. The pressure in my head turned into a small migraine, but I held firm.

"I spoke to Alan, and he said we may have a case, but that doesn't mean much. If no one is speaking up, then we would be fighting an uphill battle for months, and with the legal costs and…"

I couldn't listen to the rest. Dad trying to explain how we just didn't have the money to make some goddamn justice happen. I guess Mr. Barnes didn't know that his daughter was one of the main perpetrators, or maybe he did and was just playing dumb, understanding our financial situation enough to know we couldn't follow through. Fuck him too.

It was Dad and I against the world, and the other team wasn't playing fair. Fine. That's life, but now I had something that they didn't have. If my suspicions were correct, and some serious internet searches were needed first to make sure I hadn't had a psychotic break, then I didn't have to play fair either. Nothing that would hurt them, I decided. I just needed evidence. Something to beat their ever victorious 3-against-1 approach to any argument. Then I could be free. Maybe get a transfer to Arcadia if I was lucky. No, fuck luck. If it was going to happen, I was going to make it happen.

I released the clamp I had been holding in my mind, the pressure exploded, and the ideas flowed to the point that I couldn't have listened to Dad if I tried. I could hear him talking, but the thoughts were everywhere, distracting to the extreme.

So many ideas, so many possibilities, and all of them were different. Any of them could work, but I needed to be covert. Nothing that could reveal my newfound status in any way, which made any sort of direct confrontation impossible. Nothing that would cause any sort of physical harm, and I didn't have the money to even get started with some of them, so I pruned the thoughts, one after another, until one solidified in my mind that met all of the criteria. Being so limited meant that the idea had flaws, but I became more and more confident that it would work. I could make it work.

The bitches wouldn't even know what hit them.

AN: First and foremost, thanks for reading. If you see any mistakes above in grammar, formatting, spelling, syntax, and/or word choice, then please say something! I proofread everything I write, but I'm new to this game and I'm human to boot so there will most definitely be mistakes that I don't catch. As they are pointed out I will work harder to make sure they don't show up again.

Speaking of mistakes, I'm trying to stay as close as I can to everything as it was up to Taylor's trigger in canon, so if you see anything wrong there, please let me know.

If you have constructive (positive and negative) feedback to offer, please let me hear it. I want to improve for both of our sakes.

This fanfiction is a thank you to all of those who have already written excellent-quality fanfiction for Worm, and most importantly Wildbow, who spent two and a half years writing a masterpiece for others to enjoy. I hope I do it justice.

I plan to work on this for a while. Updates will be consistent.

Thanks and Have a Nice Day,

OMM