Origin
When Lilith Mother of all Demons was freed from Leviathan, her mystical prison, and summoned her Lilin, their presence weakened the dimensional fabrics and this led to a reality rip to occur in Phoenix, Arizona, in a rundown building basement. This rip allowed a hive-minded bacteria known as the Viral Swarm to enter Earth-616. In the Viral Swarm’s homeworld, they were the dominant life-form as they had fed on and consumed all other living beings. The Viral Swarm, seeing the reality rip into Earth-616, saw this as an opportunity for new life energy to feed on.
The basement in Phoenix, Arizona was being used by several homeless people as a shelter. The Viral Swarm bacteria separated and in doing so found amongst the various homeless people individual hosts. This particular part of the hive bacteria would enter a female and transformed herself into the being known as Dreadlox.
Creation
Dreadlox was created by Roy Thomas and Andre Coates in 1993 and first appeared in The Secret Defenders #1.
Powers & Abilities
Now that the Viral Swarm had infected the host body, it used its power from its original world to transform the homeless human into a superhuman. The bacteria would allow the host to represent the swarm’s reputation and fear it had in its homeworld. This allowed the human host Dreadlox to create powerful and deadly illusions of her victims’ worst fears and nightmares.
She also had the ability to heal and create youth in others. This among the Swarm’s own ability to drain human lifeforce, the Swarm’s various hosts also exercise a joined mind, giving them a supreme hive intellect for their deadly team.