The twisted creatures circled them like predators sensing wounded prey, their movements unnaturally synchronized despite their grotesque differences. One had the body of a bear but Henrik's face grafted onto its skull, his organic weapons quirk manifesting as bone spears that jutted from its shoulders at impossible angles. Another scuttled on spider legs while sporting what looked like human torsos fused along its back, each one twitching with residual nervous system activity.
But it was the thing that had once been Dong that held Mateo's attention. The chimera's serpentine body writhed with mechanical joints inserted between organic segments, and tubes pumped luminescent fluid through transparent portions of its modified skin. Its eyes—still recognizably Dong's—tracked Akira's movements with a mixture of recognition and predatory hunger that made Mateo's stomach turn.
