“Do you—you mean, okay you believe the story, or okay you’ll help me wake everyone up?”

He narrows his eyes. “Now, that’s an interesting way to phrase that question.”

I work hard to stay still. I’ve made a mistake somehow. He’s suspicious.

I try to deflect. “A question that you haven’t yet answered,” I reply.

He doesn’t move, his gaze still locked on me. “Yes, I believe you—because I woke up on that ship too, and your explanation makes more sense than any guess I’ve been able to come up with. And yes. I’ll help you wake everyone up.”

Oh. That was the mistake.

Smelling blood in the water, he moves closer. “What exactly is it that you’re getting out of this rescue attempt, Callahan? Why would you go to so much trouble for people you’ve been happily sacrificing to the Beings for over a year?”

“I didn’t sacrifice anyone,” I snap, stung. “I ran a business, that’s all.”

He presses harder. “I said I’ll help you and I mean it, but not until you tell me your motive. Because we both know you’re not usually big on saving people out of the goodness of your heart.”

I pin my gaze to his and lift my left hand. “Do we? Is that a thing we both know?”

Guilt flits across his face again, but he refuses to budge. “What,” he says again, measuring each word, “are you getting out of this? Because the more you evade the question, the more convinced I am that you’re keeping something from me.”

I drop my hand. Last chance to give him some believable excuse. “When I’m not in the dream,” I say, keeping eye contact, because eye contact is the most important part of a successful lie, “the Being’s effects disappear. The sting disappears. What I get out of this is a chance to live.”

He can know that I’m doing this to save my skin. He just can’t know I’m making him do this to save my skin. He can’t know he has a choice—that he could go through a mirror right now and jet down to Earth and leave me behind. That’s why I had to frame Mirage as the orchestrator of this little plan.

I’m not sure why I chose to tell Elliott that the Beings’ effects disappear outside the dream instead of just saying that there’s a chance Mirage might be able to heal me if we succeed, though. I think it’s maybe because I don’t want to remember I might still be a dead man no matter what we do.