Avery lowered the Stanchion on its shock-absorbing armature and hugged it to his shoulder. Immediately, the rifle’s targeting system established a wireless link to his helmet’s HUD, and a thin blue line angled across the the drone’s feed. This was the M99’s aiming vector—the path its five-point-four-millimeter tungsten rounds would travel. Avery angled the rifle down until the vector turned green: an indication that his first shot would pass directly through the target individual’s chest. Almost as if the man could feel the invisible line enter through his left armpit and exit just below his right, he swiped his credit chip against the counter and swiveled around on his stool.
	...
	The Stanchion’s slug exited the barrel with a muffled crack and punched through two of the office building’s steel-reinforced, polycrete floors with no adverse effect on its trajectory. Traveling at fifteen thousand meters per second, the round whistled over the highway and hit the target at the apex of his sternum. The man flew to pieces as the round buried itself in a rooster tail of pulverized asphalt.