Worm

Origin

Winston Hobbes was born with a disfigured, worm-like appearance due to his mutation. At the age of four, he was taken by his mutant parents to St. Jerome’s Children’s Hospital, where they abandoned him because they could not care for him due to his condition. In his first night at the facility, Winston managed to escaped the ward he was staying on, and was found by the security team in the courtyard, where he was burrowing into the dirt by both digging and eating it. This would earn him his nickname: the Worm. 
Over the years, the hospital staff continually had to increase security measures on Winston, especially after an incident when he was eight years old where he injured several staff members. From that point, Winston was sedated regularly. 
Winston was finally able to fully escape St. Jerome’s at the age of sixteen by tunneling out through the hospital’s basement. The hospital staff soon found that Winston had already created a whole network of tunnels beneath the building, and they ultimately stopped searching for him when they discovered that one of the tunnels went all the way into the New York City Subway System.

Creation

Worm was created by David Hine and Lan Medina in 2005 and first appeared in District X # 7.  

Major Story Arcs

Underground

Hoping to reunite with his parents, Winston one day attempted to seek out as much information as he could about his family. 
He made his way to St. Jerome’s Hospital and ended up killing a security guard after going through the hospital’s records. After finding information about his adoption agency case-worker, Millicent Ferrall, Winston tracked her down, killed her, and used her files to find out where his birth parents were. 
Determining Winston’s next move, Detectives Bishop and Izzy Ortega staked out his parents’ home. When Winston broke in, he managed to bite Bishop and throw him out a window. Before following Bishop outside, Winston discovered that his parents now had another son, one who looked like a normal human. Enraged with grief, Winston smashed up his parent’s home and then went back outside to finish Bishop off. Luckily for Bishop, Ortega was able to keep Winston from killing his partner, but he was unable to prevent him from escaping back into the sewers. 
Once in the sewers, Winston’s rage over his parent’s actions drove him to take it out upon the Tunnel Rats, a group of subterranean mutants, and he began killing them one by one. 
With the help Nemesio Pietri, a mutant precognitive, Bishop and Ortega were able to track down Winston’s lair, where they found several children’s books in one room, and the remains of several partially cannibalized corpses in another. Hearing a scream, the three men found Winston attacking the Tunnel Rats leader, Melek, while his wife Sarah lay dead beside him. Nemesio stepped forward to defend Melek, only to be fatally clawed in the chest. Bishop quickly fired at Winston, but after blasting him once and moving in to apprehend him, Winston spit some of his poison in Bishop’s eyes, and began attacking him. Seeing no other way to end Winston’s rampage, Ortega emptied six rounds from his service pistol into him, at which point Winston fell to the floor, dead.

Powers and Abilities

Winston’s worm-like mutation gave him heightened strength, eyesight specially adapted to the dark, venomous fangs and spit, and tunneling capabilities through the use of his sharp claws and ability to digest soil. 
Due to his mutation, Winston had no vocal cords and was therefore unable to speak.