I look down at my fingers, which are shining black in the moonlight. I want to wipe the blood off. I don’t deserve to wipe the blood off.

“I lied to you,” I tell him.

The night swallows the words. He inhales again and then, carefully, like it hurts him—because of course it hurts him—exhales.

Then he says: “I know that, you absolute jackass.”

I blink. “What?”

He turns his head and stares me down. “I know people who die in the dream don’t just wake up fine on Mirage. I knew it wasn’t true about two seconds after I thought of it, because I realized it doesn’t make any sense. And also, because I remembered that the very first time we woke up on Mirage, I heard you screaming.”

The memory flashes through my mind: waking up on the rainbow floor, my Being sting sending fire and brimstone through my veins—and me, howling like I was being burned alive.

“You were far away, but I knew it was you,” Elliott says. “I came running. I could just barely see you ahead when I somehow got knocked back out and woke up in the dream again. I’m guessing that was your doing, right?”

Numbly, I nod.

He turns his gaze to the stars again. “I didn’t put things together until you fed me that bullshit about how maybe Braedan wasn’t really dead. I have to give you a little kudos—you at least looked guilty when you said it. That might’ve given me a clue even if I hadn’t remembered you screaming on Mirage and realized it meant you still had the Being sting even there. Which means, I suppose, that we’re both dying now.”

I sit down at his back, bracing myself on the opposite side of the metal beam. He’s only a few inches away but from here I could pretend I was alone, if I wanted to.

I wish I wanted to. It would hurt less.

“You were right,” I tell him. “About me being all or nothing. I wanted to see Ty again so bad. I would give anything.” Something catches in my voice and I stop, close my eyes. I don’t want to look at the radio tower anymore. Don’t want to think about what this place means to me. But, of course, now I can’t stop thinking about it. I open my eyes. “You said this is my dream, right? Not the shared dream.”

“That’s my best guess.”

It makes sense. I must’ve been reinserted back into the shared dream as soon as I initially fell unconscious, and then when all the islanders were gone or dead and I was dreaming alone, my mind built my own personal mental construct. Just like the construct of my old house, the one with memories playing in its windows.