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“Is this . . . Trillium?” Silvius nodded. “I never realized it was midway between Tosca and the swamp.”
    â€œDid you know Trillium sits on an ancient volcano?”
    â€œYes, I’ve heard that before.”
    Silvius pulled out another map from the cask, a smaller one. Unrolling it on top of the other, he tapped on the three coastlines of the Hellgate Sea and pointed to three red dots, one in Trillium, another in the swamp, and the last in Tosca. “Each red dot represents a volcano.” He revealed more dots, farther away. “As you can see, volcanoes, extinct and otherwise, exist throughout our world, but Tosca’s and Mastiff’s volcanoes are the closet to Trillium.”
    â€œWhat does that matter to us?”

    â€œI found an early Toscan document, something written by the Trillium rats who originally landed here.” He pointed to a browned parchment pinned to the wall. “According to its translation, we once lived in the center of Trillium’s extinct volcano. I think we’re chasing something from that volcano. Something we can no longer find in Trillium—something hidden from us.”
    â€œBut what?”
    Silvius looked down at the map on his lap, tracing the small drawing of Trillium’s City Museum with his claw. “The City Museum is built in the center of Trillium, the exact center of the volcano. And do you know what was next to the museum?” Billycan shook his head. “Our former home.”
    His ears perking, Billycan sat up in his chair. “You mean . . . the
lab
?”
    Silvius smiled. “Good, lad. You’re catching on. Not only was the lab next door, the buildings were connected—one and the same. The blaze was put out before it reached the museum.”
    â€œYou said the Topsiders took something from you in the lab. What was it?”
    Lifting his left leg, Silvius revealed a massive scar running along the inside, an area of his flesh that went concave as though carved out with a knife. “They took my flesh. They took my blood. Remarkably, they didn’t take my soul, thank the Saints for that. Whatever changed us—made us bigger, stronger, better—they wanted it.”
    â€œBut what was it? What were they after?”
    Silvius traced a circle around the drawing of the museum. “Whatever makes a rat like me, a creature that should live no more than four or five years, live to over one hundred—that’s what they were after, and I reason that if they haven’t yet found it, they’re still searching. The humans will always want more than they have. If whatever lies in the heart of that volcano is the reason for our extended lives, our strength and intelligence, just
think
of what it could do for a human.”
    â€œThey could live forever,” said Billycan.
    Silvius’s claw landed in the center of the map. “Whatever the answer is, I believe it is hidden in the museum.”

CHAPTER THREE
Diaries Found in the Attic
    T HE C OUNCIL HAD GATHERED over tea, trying to make sense of several diary entries. “When they found the above-ground city our ancestors had built, the scientists clearly knew we weren’t ordinary rats,” said Juniper. “Lucky for us that they were the ones who found us. As we all know, the Topsiders’ world is full of those who hate rats.”
    â€œIt seems the scientists were driven out of Trillium by the city’s founders,” said Virden. “According to this journal entry, they had gone to the then new government and tried to tell Trillium’s leaders of our uniqueness, but politicians knew most humans would never want to live in a city of baffling, super-intelligent rats, so they forced the scientists out, denouncing them and threatening their lives.”
    â€œSo the scientists fled,” said Cole, setting down the last page of the journal, “taking cages full of Trillium rats with