Bare skin means no armor . I looked at all the frying tourists sprawled on the sand. Most of them would be shaikujin —corporators from one or another of the megas. Where in Seattle would you see this many corporators wandering around in public without the benefit of any armor whatsoever? Nowhere, that's where. Here, a disgruntled sniper with a grudge to settle would have no trouble with one-shot-one-kill. Either the tourists were pretty fragging confident in the security provisions—pretty fragging overconfident, if you asked me—or the tropical sun had cooked the sense of self-preservation right out of their pointy little heads.