Chapter 646

When Razor Hughes finally stood before him, Jackie understood—those endless reels of violent KO highlights in braindances, the media’s sensational nicknames like “the Human Meat Grinder,” even the snarling, blood-drenched faces on street posters—all of that had been just two-dimensional projections of this man.

Now, filling his entire vision, stood a body where technology and professional violence were seamlessly fused: carbon-fiber bones gleamed under the overhead lights with the chill sheen of surgical instruments, like an exoskeleton exposed to the air; dark brown synth-muscle bundles bulged in grotesque, block-like segments that defied biology, each fiber trembling faintly with his breath, like hydraulic hoses about to burst.

Worst of all was his face—nano-grade synthetic skin replicated the fine texture of human dermis, but the overgrown masseter muscles around his brow ridge and cheekbones warped his features, twisting what might have been a smile into the carnivorous snarl of a predator.