FaceTrace reads microexpressions before the subject knows what they're thinking. It doesn't require cooperation. Naia knows Vale Four is about to deploy it on everyone inside the facility, including the holdfasts who have been trained to pass. No training accounts for a system that reads the face before the actor knows what they're about to perform. The IPO timeline is running, the call option has an expiry, and they cannot afford tells.

June and Elle work the problem in the monitor room. The solution is to practice on each other before the real sessions begin. Their communication runs in two layers simultaneously - performed neutrality on top, writing whispers underneath, stripped of reverb and set apart in the mix like passed notes in audio form. Elle lingers on the wrong images for too long. June clocks every tell in real time and writes it down. The session ends with both of them knowing much more about each other than they did when it started.

Surveillance becomes the plot. FaceTrace is the instrument that threatens to collapse the distinction between performance and self. Ava's comparison of FaceTrace to confession is the direct articulation of what the system actually is. The surface resemblance is the point. The system underneath is considerably older.