Speck

Speck is the thirtieth arc of Worm. It is preceded by Venom and followed by Teneral.

Summary
Panacea modifies Taylor's brain in an attempt to give her power more of an edge in the ongoing battle against Scion. The range of Taylor's power is reduced to sixteen feet and she loses the ability to speak, but she gains the ability to completely control anybody within her range.

Marquis, Tattletale, and Lung, believing that Taylor is now too dangerous to be let loose, attempt to apprehend her and keep her on an alternate Earth until the fighting is over. After a brief scuffle, Taylor manages to gain control of Canary and uses her power to sedate the others and escape.

On the battlefield against Scion, Taylor attempts to use her new power to fight Scion with a small contingent of capes. She struggles to obtain a handle on some of their powers and does some minor damage against Scion, but uses a teleporter to escape before he can retaliate. She is met by Glaistig Uaine, who notices Taylor's deteriorating mental state and warns her to hold onto an anchor of her humanity.

Taylor seeks out Dragon in order to find Teacher, The Yàngbǎn, the remnants of the Birdcage, and other large cape groups, and realizes she has lost the ability to read and is slowly losing her comprehension of language. Dragon understands something is wrong, but trusts Taylor enough to give her the information. Taylor returns to the camp, seizes control of Clairvoyant and Doormaker, and sets off after Teacher.

She finds Teacher and confronts him after subduing his group. He offers to use his power to grant her the ability to speak, but she refuses, not wanting to subject herself to his influence. She takes control of his group, using Doormaker to build an overlapping array of portals to extend her range, and takes control of the Yàngbǎn before traveling to the Birdcage.

She finds Dragon still guarding the Birdcage and destroys a large number of her suits before targeting her datacenters in an attempt to shut her down. Dragon eventually feints defeat and withdraws, allowing Taylor to break open the Birdcage and retrieve the remainder of the capes within. She uses Clairvoyant to look for capes on alternate Earths, and controls several Slaughterhouse 9000 clones, the Travelers (except Oliver), Goddess, Ash Beast, and most of the capes from the camp.

She focuses her army on Scion, doing considerable damage but resulting in the deaths of Ash Beast, Othala, Trickster, Revel, Lady Photon, Alexandria's body, and others. She assigns her contingent of tinkers to build a huge interdimensional weapon to destroy Scion's real body, but the attack fails and Doormaker's power runs out, resulting in Taylor losing control of most of her capes.

Realizing that Scion, not used to the emotions of his human body, can be harmed when distracted by visions of his dead partner, Taylor struggles to convince the Undersiders and Glaistig Uaine to work with her. In the meantime Scion kills Leviathan and fights the remaining Endbringers. Taylor taks control of Scrub and Labyrinth to replace Doormaker and enlists Oliver and other Changers to create huge replicas of Eden's corpse to distract Scion. Foil is able to shoot him twice with projectiles imbued with her power and Defiant activates the interdimensional tinker gun. Scion, his physical defenses destroyed by Foil and his mental defenses destroyed by the facsimilies of Eden surrounding the battlefield, is finally killed after the interdimensional tinker weapon destroys his body.

Taylor loses control of the majority of her capes and returns to New York through the portal. Having lost all comprehension of human behavior, she prepares to fight her way through the hundreds of capes she thinks are fighting each other, not realizing that they are actually celebrating the victory. She eventually calms down enough to release the remaining members of her swarm and leaves through the portal provided by Glaistig Uaine. Days later, she wakes up and is met by Contessa, who can understand Taylor. Contessa gives Taylor a chance to reflect on her actions and then shoots her twice in the head.