His heart should have been an absolute cacophony with his face twisted up in so much anger, and instead Claudia was listening to that strange, steady chug, unblinking eyes on his chest while he bared his blunt teeth at her and made noises that he thought could compare. He wasn't real, somehow, not even dead; no blood from under his fake flesh, no heart, no thoughts. Some kind of puppet.

"You can't?" Claudia earnestly asked. Perhaps he was bound by what the puppetmaster allowed. There must have been one. He must have bled.