In the future, post-apocalyptic world Avery Cates is living in, everyone is his enemy. This isn't helped by him being a gun-for-hire, paid by anyone with yen (the global currency) handy and a target somewhere in the offing for an offing, but at least he knows his trade and all the tricks of survival in the ruinous mega-city centred on New York that is the eastern US seaboard. Why, he's reached the ripe old age of 27, without dying, without using medical rebuilding - legal or otherwise, but with little bank balance, little future, and little way out of the ultra-violent, potty-mouthed milieu he finds himself in.