Inside: a building on fire. Outside: one slow blink.
Last five minutes, everything on the line, and your face is a still image. Inside, a building is on fire and the alarms are going and somebody is running down a corridor with a hose. Outside: one slow blink at the miss. The Eye knows, because the Eye can read the leak — the jaw set a millimeter tighter, the replies getting shorter, the glass put down with slightly too much care. You learned somewhere, early, that visible feelings are billable: someone used one against you, or laughed at one, or simply wasn't there to catch it, and the department of your face that handled broadcasting was quietly shut down. So now you watch your own heart rate like it belongs to someone else. People call you calm. You are not calm. You are soundproofed, and there's a difference the people closest to you have started to hear. The strange grief of your archetype: you feel everything the Cardiac Case feels, at the same voltage. You just pay extra to make it look like nothing.
Get your read — free on iPhoneyou're not calm. you're soundproofed. the eye can hear it anyway.