The ganger took a long moment to think about this. Kaine gave him time to puzzle it out.
'Fine! Grab yer shit, and let's go,' the ganger yelled.
Kaine opened the drawer and reached inside. Turning his hand over, he reached up and grasped the Ares Predator he kept secured there with MagnoTape.
With a sharp mental command he hadn't used in almost eight years, Kaine tripped his wired reflexes. The jolt to his system was one part excruciating pain and one part ecstasy. The world slowed to a crawl as his body was ripped from the realm of normal human perception and into a place where nanoseconds stretched out long enough to make a blink a temporary blackout.
As he spun around he could see that the ganger was wired too. Most likely he had one of those new Mitsuhama rigs. Twice as fast and half the cost of the ancient hardwire Renraku system Kaine was running. The ganger opened up with his SMG, but Kaine was already dropping to a crouch. The stream of bullets perforated the wall behind him, cutting his favorite Poker Dogs painting in two. The ganger was all jitter and no jive. Like a drivers ed student behind the wheel of a Lamborghini.
As Kaine dropped he brought the predator around, popped the safety, and squeezed the trigger once, twice.
Twin thunderclaps roared. The first bullet caught the ganger square in the chest and sent his arms flying out in front of him. The second round hit right between the eyes, snapping the ganger's neck back and coating the room behind him with a design that would have made Jackson Pollock jealous.
Kaine had already crossed the room before the body hit the floor. His hat flew off, revealing the wiry brush cut he'd worn since serving in the UCAS Marines back in the '30s. The only difference was that it had faded to a steel gray over the past few decades.
Kaine stopped beside the body and looked at the corpse.
'You can steal the things a man holds dear. You can burn down his home. You can even take a man's life. But never, ever, fuck with a man's dog.'
By the time Kaine reached the apartment door, he could hear the shit hitting the fan. The gangers were shouting to one another, kids were crying, and some lady had started screaming. In retrospect he probably should have let it go. This was exactly the sort of attention he'd spent the last fifteen years avoiding.
But Alvin had been a good dog. He couldn't let that one go. Didn't make much difference at this point. His foot was well into it. Only option now was to see it through to the end.
Still in his apartment, Kaine heard footsteps coming down the hall toward his place. He shrugged out of his trench coat leaving him in jeans, a black Troika Death t-shirt, and sensible brown work shoes. He had a good build for a man of sixty, thanks in no small part to the 70% of his body that had been replaced with chrome. Not the slick 'looks like real skin!' crap Runners were getting these days. It was hardcore; polished steel, exposed pistons, buff it with Turtle Wax chrome. Not even the retro-rustic crap the gangers were getting into recently could compare.
Kaine flexed feeling the rotors in his joints whirr, and he called up a status report via the HUD in his cybereyes. Everything was either yellow or green, meaning it would work well enough for what he was about to do. It felt good to fire up the old systems again. Real good.
Kaine dove out the door, rolling into the hall and coming up next to the stairs. Two gangers, both armed with old model HKs, skittered to a stop as he appeared. Before they could activate their wires, Kaine had the Predator up and firing. The first ganger dropped before he could figure out what the hell was happening. The one behind him only managed to get a single shot off before the unexpected arrival of a chunk of hot lead in his skull interrupted his concentration.
Kaine ducked in time to avoid the ganger's bullets, but they hit the banister beside him, peppering him with a hail of splinters. By the time he got to his feet, two more gangers had hit the hallway.
'What the hell?' the first one gasped. 'This fucker is chromed.'
Kaine sprinted towards them.
Or he would have, if his right knee hadn't gone redline. The whole mechanism locked up, his HUD squealing an alarm, and Kaine took two stumbling steps forward. Reaching out with his free hand, he grabbed one of the banister's pillars just in time to keep from falling.
In a stroke of the same good luck that had kept him alive all those years back in Seattle, the boys at the door didn't have guns. Of course, in a stroke of the same bad luck that had forced him into hiding in the first place, they were carrying something just as bad.
Monofilament swords.
He hesitated for half a second, wondering again just what the hell he was doing. He might as well put up a flag out front with his face on it. The smart thing to do would be to get out now, before things got any worse.
But damn it, Alvin had been a good dog.
As his system tried to reboot his left knee, Kaine brought up his pistol. A single shot took the first ganger down, but he knew the second would be on top of him before he could fire again. Instead, he pivoted to the side just as the ganger got close. As the ganger passed, the mono-molecular edge of the blade cut harmlessly through the air instead of slicing his arm off.
Kaine gave his wires another kick, even though he knew full well that's probably what screwed up his knee, and brought the Predator around. The ganger recovered at the same moment, and he swung his blade at Kaine. Before Kaine could get the shot off the ganger's blade sliced through the end of the Predator's barrel.
'Shit,' Kaine growled, tossing the now worthless chunk of metal away.
The ganger, shocked by his own success, didn't react quickly enough. It gave Kaine the time he needed. Willing the chrome in his left arm up to full power he ripped the pillar loose from the stairs with a crack. Pivoting on his locked knee, he brought it around and jammed the jagged end of it straight into the ganger's face. The ganger dropped his blade and stumbled backward, hands clasped to his bleeding face. Kaine limped after him, and with a swift blow to the ganger's neck dropped him to the floor, lifeless.
From outside, Kaine heard shouts and cheers.
He limped down the hall to the building entrance, his damn knee still not turning over. With tires squealing, the last two gangers peeled off down the street in their GAZ-P, crap tumbling out of the back as it skidded around the corner and disappeared. Kaine's neighbors rushed to him, clapping him on the back, and shouting their thanks.
Kaine grimaced.
Everyone gathered in the empty apartment at 4D. Kaine had finally gotten his knee to reboot, but it was still running on the edge of red. He sat on an empty crate, listening to the crowd of people arguing over what to do.
'We don't need to do anything,' the young man from 4C insisted. 'Those guys won't come back here.'
A number of people nodded, making noises of agreement.
'I don't know,' an older woman from the apartment above Kaine's replied. 'I think the best thing we can do is move on. Find somewhere else.'
A few folks mumbled their assent, but others began arguing against this. Kaine could see the argument that had been going round and round for the last twenty minutes was building up steam again. He couldn't take much more of it.
'She's right,' he shouted, his hard, gravelly voice cutting through the noise. The crowd went silent.
'Didn't you see the markings on those kids?' he asked. 'They're New Chamber Boys, the biggest, best-armed gang on the west side of the wall. You think those boys are just going to run home, and that'll be that? Hell, no. They're going to go back to whatever shithole they crawled out of, they're going to get a whole bunch of their friends, a lot more guns, and they're going to come back here to teach everyone a lesson.'
A low murmur ran through the crowd.
'This is all your fault,' a middle aged guy in a shirt and tie growled at Kaine.
'You're right,' Kaine said. 'This is my fault. I should have let it go, but I didn't. For that, I'm sorry. The only smart thing to do is get out of here.'
'Sorry?'
The voice was soft, wavering. It cracked a bit at the end of the word, and Kaine knew it was Madam Hilda. The ancient ork woman, draped in the multi-colored crocheted shawl she always wore, shuffled forward. The people around her stepped out of the way, and as she passed, the gnarled stick she used for a cane rapped the
