Well, Sometimes It's Also A Metaphor

When you become a sniper, they cut out your hearts.

This is not a metaphor.  It’s a difficult series of surgical operations, considering all the things they did to your skin and bone and sinew when you passed the Anvil to prevent the enemy from getting near either of them, but difficult or not, replacing them with constant-pressure cyberpumps is necessary to get an LS-series vocspec.

To hit something at ten-thousand yards, you can’t afford any tremble in your hands.  The photonic nerves everyone uses these days are a good start.  The breather hemocules and milspec glands we gave you at the end of basic take care of fatigue-based muscle tremors.

But if you really want to compete in this game, you can’t have a pulse.