Rat was sure the silent, four-eyed skull of a dead god was staring at him.

He followed the crowd off the train toward a rickety stand with the word Orientation painted on the front. But he couldn’t stop looking into the giant god’s eyes. Every dead person Rat had seen had eyes like that. Unseeing. Empty. The only difference was the dead god had four of them, in a diamond pattern. Each was yellow, perfectly circular, lidless, pupilless.

The rest of the god’s head was slate gray, the same color as the stone mountain it rested atop, hundreds of feet above the dirt road Rat stood upon. The head itself must be dozens of feet wide. If the god had a body, Rat couldn’t see it. Maybe it was buried beneath the rest of the mountain. Maybe it was the mountain. Maybe that mouthless, noseless head was all that remained. Maybe that mouthless, noseless head was all the god ever was.

The dead god did have another orifice. Above the topmost eye, below an azure horn, was a hole. A black yawn, where the god’s slate skin had been chipped away. Where the North Bay Mining Company, Rat’s soon-to-be employer, had drilled directly into the god’s brain. Where Rat would look for the knowledge he’s been hunting.

Rat was shoved forward in line. He made a fist, stayed quiet. Rat had always been small, and when you were small and hungry, you avoided fights. Let the bigger guy shove you around until they forgot about you and bullied someone else. Someone who had something to take.

Another shove. Rat slipped his shiv out of his sleeve, keeping his hand against his leg, and turned to face the man behind him. Rat wasn’t going to start something. But he’d end it if he had to. The man who shoved him was a head taller than Rat, with curly hair. Perfect for grabbing.

“Move.” The man tried to push Rat again. So Rat slapped his wrist aside, grabbed his hair, wrenched his head down, and put his blade right to the man’s throat.

“We got a problem?” Rat said into his ear.

“Do we?” the woman sitting at the Orientation booth asked. Rat was now at the front of the line. She wore the same canvas pants as everyone else, plus a slightly nicer shirt. Her quill pen hovered, dripping blue ink. She had a golden, company-issued pocket watch on a leather cord. A gruff looking man stood next to her. “Or am I gonna send both of you back to Wolfwatch?”

Rat refused to go back. Not until he got a lead. He slipped his shiv back in his sleeve before letting go of the man’s hair. “No problem. Name’s Rat.”

She narrowed her eyes. The gruff man next to her didn’t react. “I’ve got three dozen others I can send into the MindMine. I don’t need a joker.”

“It’s my name. Put it in your book.”

The woman did. Someone else gave Rat a hand’s length silver needle. The needle was attached to a snaking rubber hose, attached to a long glass tube. The tube had straps on it, like a backpack.

“Where’s my pickax?” Rat asked. Wasn’t this place a mine?

“Not that kind of mine,” the woman said. “Next!”

Rat stepped out of line. His attacker avoided Rat’s gaze. Good. Rat would find some hint of his parents. Then he’d go from there.

He put on the backpack, tightened the straps. The glass tube wasn’t too heavy, nor that uncomfortable, frankly. But Rat hated how it straightened his spine. When you had a little bend in your spine, everyone else underestimated how fast you could move, or how tall you could become.

“You new?”

Rat turned. The voice belonged to a man with a gray-tipped mustache. He was taller than Rat, per usual, but he had a nice smile. Kind eyes. Good. People like him were easy to manipulate. And Rat needed as much information as he could get his hands on.

“First day,” Rat said. “You are?”

“William.” The man held out his hand. Rat shook it, strong. It helped to have people believe he was trustworthy.

“Rat.”

William didn’t flinch at the name. The pair started walking to the scaffolding below the dead god. “What brings you to the MindMine?”

“Money.”

“Bearshit,” William said. “You wanted gold, you could have gone to any other mine. You’re here for the past. Just like the rest of us.”

Rat grunted. He hated being read like that. Especially when it was true. Rat’s parents had abandoned him before he was old enough to make memories. He grew up in that freezing orphanage, scrounging Wolfwatch’s frozen alleys for food for years. But he never found a trace of his parents. When he found what the MindMine housed, he took all of his savings from the false cobble he had stashed near Darkhollow Row and stowawayed south. And if he could find out what happened to his parents, then he could track them down. Maybe they’d show him their love. Maybe he’d show them his shiv. He hadn’t decided yet.

“What are you looking for, then?” Rat asked. Information freely given was just as useful as information extracted.

“My wife.” William sighed. “She left. I want to know where to. And why.”

They climbed the rickety scaffolding. Every wooden plank and metal bar shook as they went.

“You don’t have to tell me what you’re looking for,” William said, as they walked right past one of the god’s blank eyes, as tall as they were. Rat didn’t look at it. Nope. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

As if Rat had any intention of telling anyone else why he was here. His calves burned. He checked his right wrist. Thank the Lone Wolf. His shiv was still in place. Once he got alone, perhaps in his bunk tonight, he’d like to sharpen her again. Just to be safe.

From the top of the scaffold, all of MindMine’s town spread out below. Two rows of wooden buildings, bunkhouses, another strip of general stores, a blacksmith, a mess hall. A long tube trailed down to the railway, which ran back north to Wolfwatch or south to Eagle’s Aerie. Everything else was slate-gray stone, the occasional green cactus or scrubweed blowing by in the hot wind. No snow anywhere. Things were looking better already.

“One tip,” William said. “You’ll get splashed. Less you get splashed, the better.”

“Splashed?” How did this fucking mine work?

A company manager waved them over. He pointed at Rat. “You new?”

Rat nodded, avoiding the man’s gaze.

“Wait here.” The man checked his pocket watch. Golden. Same leather cord. Easy enough to cut. “We’ve got orientation in fifteen minutes.”

William gave Rat a little salute. “Find me at mess tonight. We’ll catch up.”

Rat didn’t nod or shake his head. Commitment free, promise free. That was the way to be. Dinner with William. Sharpen his shiv. Both weighed the same.

After fifteen minutes of newcomers piling in, the manager waved a group of fresh miners, women and men both, in close. Behind him, the black maw of the hole into the god’s head loomed. At least the blue horn provided some shade, which Rat made sure to stand in.

“Okay,” the manager said. “Welcome to your first shift in the MindMine. We’re here for one thing. Brain sludge. Find a fresh spot, a place someone hasn’t drained before, stick that needle you got in, flick the switch, and pump out the goo. When you fill your tube with brain sludge, come on out and feed it into this funnel.” The manager tapped the metal pipe behind him. “I’ll mark you with a tally. For each full tank you get us, you get three decktars. A meal at mess costs nine decktars. A bunk in the mess costs nine decktars. So for those of you shit at math, if you do twelve vials a day, you can afford breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sleep. Forgo one of those creature comforts, and you can pocket more. Or you can get more vials. But once the sun goes down, we all pile out of the mine. You do not want to be in there when the sun goes down. Trust me.”

“What is the sludge for?” someone asked.

“Lubricant oil for trains and carriages,” the officer said. “Now, you can use some of this phosphorescent chalk to find your way.” He gestured toward a bowl of green chalk, glowing faintly. “Lastly. You’ll get splashed. Try not to get splashed too much. You’ll see why.”

“Shouldn’t we just wear more clothing?” asked someone else. Rat sidled over and palmed two more sticks of chalk without looking, still facing the group. He never knew when he might need them.

“Go ahead. It won’t help.” He looked up at the sun. “You all probably got time for six tubes worth. Get to it.”

Rat waited in the middle of the group. From this angle, the bore into the god’s skull was dark, yes, but there were these flashes of yellow lights within. He’d learn how to find what he was looking for later. He didn’t want to stick out right away by asking.

With a deep breath, Rat stepped into the hole. The skull felt crumbly under his boots. A line of kerosene torches lit up the space. Rat blinked a few times, his eyes adjusting to the dark. Adjusting to what he was seeing.

A fleshy, knotted mind. He was surrounded by twisting brain matter, swirling in every direction. His boots squished on the . . . floor . . . which sloped away from him, towards the back of the skull. Every part was pulsing slightly, contrasted against the dozens of miners spread out in the chamber, sticking those metal needles into the tangled mess. Rat watched one woman miner. She winced after sticking her needle into a chunk of pale pink tissue. As her hose sucked out . . . something . . . the glass tube on her back filled with a bright pearlescent sludge. But the wounded area of the brain was now gray and faded.

The ceiling, also fleshy, was about twenty feet up. A wooden sign that said YESTERDAY was plopped down in this row of brain matter. At least that cursed orphanage had taught Rat how to read. Back a few dozen feet was a green flag on a wooden post. What did that signify? And what was past that end of the downward slope?

Rat found a twisty bit of brain, still pink after lifting aside a fold of gray. He grabbed the needle in reverse grip, better for stabbing, and shoved it right into the god’s brain matter. There was a squelch, a pop, a splash of fluid and—

A rogue wave towers above him, before crashing down and soaking through his shirt. He stumbles, grabs tight to the railing. Did he tie the riggings tight enough to secure the mast? Better triple—

“What the fuck,” Rat hissed. It was like . . . he’d never seen so much water. Never been that soaked. And what was that about riggings and knots? The only knot he knew how to tie was his laces. But now, there was a . . . memory. From, when was that, yesterday? Yesterday, he hid in the undercarriage of that train to dodge the fare, all day, eating ostrich jerky he’d palmed at the prior station.

Rat looked at his glove, still pearlescent. The fluid didn’t even touch skin. Didn’t need to.

Well. The phantom memories were worth a little knowledge. So Rat flicked the switch and waited as his glass tube filled with brain sludge. He’d find William later so he could figure out how this place worked.

• • • •

William waved at Rat across the mess. Miners were clustered in little groups, faces smudged with pearlescent traces of god brain. It was loud, but not raucous.

But in the back, a few miners sat and stared, dead eyed, only occasionally remembering they had a plate full of beans in front of them. Like the people back home who let the cold take them. Rat wouldn’t be like that. Rat knew how to burrow and wait for the cold to pass.

“Trade ya a piece of hardtack for some info,” Rat said as he sat down on the wooden stool. One good thing about going hungry for so long is Rat didn’t need as much food as others. It gave him options.

William shook his head. “Why don’t you keep your bread, eat your beans, and ask me anyway?”

Rat shoveled a forkful of beans into his mouth. William must want something. Perhaps a favor. Sexual? Otherwise? Rat could make himself available for the right price. Older folks liked teenagers, after all. But free info? Rat would always take that. “How do you find a specific memory?”

“So you are looking for the past.”

Rat dunked his hardtack in his water, then shoved it in his mouth.

“Okay. So you know the main strip, where we come in through the god’s face? The further back you walk, the further back in time the memories are from. Closer to the front, closer to today, up through yesterday. We think. It’s all squirrely. Sometime overnight, the whole brain rumbles. And a new row of brain matter appears and pushes all the old matter back.”

Wait. “But the main strip,” Rat said. “The, whatsit, hemisphere line or something. It curves backwards. Shouldn’t we hit the back of the skull?” From the outside, the god’s head didn’t seem that big.

“Did you see the green flag?”

Rat nodded. Lone Wolf, these beans were terrible, the thin sauce they were in even worse.

“North Bay’s researchers figured out that is where, measuring from the outside, the back of the skull should be. They move every morning when we go in.”

A bean flopped out of Rat’s mouth. “But the brain keeps going.”

William drank from his metal cup. “It keeps going. Down and down. And so each row is a rough point in time. Go left or right from that juncture, and you’re moving to different places in space. Always sloping down.”

Rat imagined himself in the dark, crawling around an endless maze. “Forever?”

William shrugged. “Theoretically not, according to the researchers. Assuming time has a beginning, then the memories must have an end. Either when the god was born, or when time was. Whichever came first. All the way straight back.”

“Has anyone made it back there? To the end?”

“If they have,” William said, “then they never made it back out again. The memory drinkers go down there and don’t come back.”

“Memory drinkers?”

William gestured to the quartet in the back. Now, Rat noticed traces of that pearlescent shimmer clinging to their lips. “Say you don’t want a shadow of a memory. Say you want the whole thing. You can drink it yourself. But there are . . . consequences. Your mind gets overwritten by the new memories. Things start to break.”

Now that was good to know. Rat worked well under time pressure. And he didn’t want to stay here any longer than necessary. Now, to solve a different mystery.

Rat put his hand on William’s, casual-like. “What do I owe you for the info?”

William, gently, took his hand back to his fork. Hmm. Not interested yet. “You remind me of someone. That’s all.”

Rat ate every bean slopped onto his plate. No matter how much they made him wince.

• • • •

That night, Rat spent his wages from the day on a bunk. He didn’t know any of the people near him, and he didn’t ask. Knowing people was good. Getting known wasn’t. He’d listen. Watch. Wait. Find a way to steal those pocket watches for extra scratch down the line.

Beneath his bedsheet, he brought out his stick of phosphorescent chalk, dim enough to be hidden by the thick fabric. Then he slid his shiv into his hand, just to hold her. She was functionally a knife now, but he still thought of her as a shiv, like that first sharpened spoon he’d made when he was six. His current shiv was a small three-inch blade. Long enough to do the job, was the important thing. Holding her made him feel safe. It let him think.

Like about how his mother could have been a princess. Or his dad a duke. Unlikely, true. More likely his parents were thieves. He could work in a squad with them, finally have someone watching his back. Or merchants? He could be a merchant. He could negotiate and steal with a smile and a quill as much as with nimble fingers. No one in the orphanage ever gave him a place. He had to scrabble and fight for every crumb. This place was no different. No place was different. But Rat would like, for a fucking week, or even a day, to not have to stick to shadows. To not have to go to sleep hungry or wake up hungry. To eat something with taste that he didn’t pilfer. And Rat could keep living this way. Rat could and would burrow into the skull of a dead god to keep living this way.

If he could only just find out why he had to.

Rat slid his shiv home, pocketed his chalk, and went to sleep.

He dreamed, for the first time, of the ocean.

• • • •

Three days later, Rat went looking for his parents’ memory. Rat had been waiting to confirm North Bay didn’t really care who went missing in the dark. They truly didn’t. They knew their workers came here looking for something. They just decided it wasn’t worth the effort to corral them. As long as their lubricant flowed, North Bay didn’t care.

So mid-shift, after getting splashed with memories of a child running in a field and a woman stalking a deer with a rifle, Rat walked right past the green flag. His boots squelched as he walked down, down into the darkness. Yellow light still shot through the dead god’s mind at random intervals, casting long shadows down the rows and rows of squiggly brain. Hard faced miners stabbed into pinkish brain. This far back, some rows were drained, gray and dead.

Rat hated the god. He lived his life in the shadows, in the dark places. No one should know he existed. And to know, now, that somewhere in this warren of brain matter, there were memories of his every moment, his every action, made Rat want to blind himself, deafen himself. Everyone was afraid to give the god a name. Maybe they should be. Rat had chosen his own name when he was four years old and giving himself a name had given Rat power. Rat becoming Rat made him clearly see who he was. No need for the god to also see that.

A fist-sized neuron fired above Rat, running downbrain. If this god, dead or otherwise, stayed nameless, then maybe it would stay still. Stay dreaming and recording. At least long enough for Rat to get what he came for. And if he must be spotted, must be seen, all the god would see is him rummaging around in its own skull. Sometimes there are rats in the house. Sometimes the owner knows, and can’t do anything about it.

Rat had plied William for more information the last two nights. William had told him that the further downbrain a person went, the more the memories bunched up. Did the god’s brain work like Rat’s? All his necessary knowledge up front, all those years of eating boiled and not boiled pigeon blurred together and buried.

After about fifteen minutes of walking downbrain, Rat reached the off-limits line, marked by a sign that said as much. As if North Bay actually cared. It was a rope attached to two posts. No one to his left. No one to his right.

Rat ducked under the rope. Like he belonged.

• • • •

“I’m almost there,” William said, a few mornings later. The miners, William and Rat included, were off duty today for the experiment. They waited on the main street, near the empty train tracks heading out towards Eagle’s Aerie, while North Bay officials blocked off the god’s eyes. The company wanted to find out if blocking the god’s sight affected its memories. All the miners watched from down below, waiting to pick up where they left off.

“What will you do when you find your answer?” Rat asked. He’d been here for about a week. Two days ago, he had found Wolfwatch, his former home. Wolfwatch from fourteen years back, when Rat was three. Rat had bribed some other miners who were also looking for similar pasts into telling him where to find the city within the god’s skull. The answer was about a mile into the right hemisphere. William was looking for why his wife left him back in Silverburg, which was left hemisphere. They usually spent the mornings together, mining enough near to the front of the brain together to get wages for food, before splitting off.

“Depends on the answer,” William said. “How’s your mind, Rat?”

Weaving a skirt for her daughter. Embracing a lover. Dying of thirst in a desert, crawling toward a cactus, reaching it, trying to break it open for water, grabbing a rock, dropping the rock, grabbing it again, swinging it at the cactus, stabbing her weak palms with needles, sweating, eyes closing, sweating, sleeping . . .

“Still mine,” Rat said. Some miners lost themselves in there. Some with those shiny lips had stopped showing up at mess the next day. It would be easy. Find a good memory, and don’t drain it into the North Bay’s glass vials, no. Drink it down. Rat could go back, find a kid with good parents in a happy place, take out his shiv, cut the vein, and drink the sludge pure. He could have two childhoods, one good one, and if he had that love, if he hadn’t had to take a rock and smash it into Bobby Bouler’s temple for a bowl of soup, then he wouldn’t be . . .

No. No. Rat wasn’t going to lose himself to the MindMine. He wasn’t going to be like those memory drinkers, going deeper and deeper into that wriggling place. He was going to find what happened to his parents. Then he’d leave this fucking maze, and—

Rat caressed his shiv through his wool sleeve. He had the power. He was in control.

“William,” he said. “When you find out why your wife left you . . .” Rat needed to play this right. If he could keep William around, then mornings wouldn’t be so bad. Plus, having an ally to search with would cut his time in half. “You could stay. Help me find what I’m looking for.”

On the skull, North Bay’s research team finished hooking in the blackout curtains.

“You still haven’t told me what that is, Rat.”

Should he tell? If he did, he’d give up . . . what? It would mean William would know where Rat went each day. And William could tell others, and the others could come and corner Rat, knives and rocks and those picks all going to take, take, take everything Rat had, just like when he was left for dead on Frostblind Alley, like when he had to use snow to pack his bleeding wounds.

Or it would mean William could come find Rat. If Rat needed help.

“Right.” Rat nodded. “I haven’t.”

“Being honest with you, Rat.” The blackout curtains pulled across the topmost eye. “Once I get what I’m looking for, I’m gone. I’m losing myself to the memories. Maybe I never should have come.”

“Wrong,” Rat said. Lone Wolf, why had he said that? “It’ll be worth it when we get our answers. It has to be worth it.”

“Hope you’re right.” William patted Rat on the back. Rat flinched. “Sorry.”

But Rat regretted flinching all night. If Rat hadn’t flinched, then William would have held him for longer, and that would have made William easier to manipulate. That was Rat’s regret. Only that.

The next morning, when the first shift went in, there was a new row of brain matter up front just like normal.

• • • •

He found Frostblind Alley.

It took hours of getting splashed with the lonely, hungry, and deranged of Wolfwatch. Sometimes, he’d get lucky and get a cruel guard, trading an empty stomach for an empty soul. But eventually, he found himself. A flash of a tiny boy, holding a stolen pearl-handled knife in front of him, trying to ward off four other boys.

The knife had belonged to a duchess, picked out of her refuse by Rat the day before. He had shined it up in the snow, got it all glimmering. It was worth a few meals.

It had also been a butter knife, so the other boys took it anyway. Then they beat him until he couldn’t move. He should have hidden. He should have buried himself in the snow and let them pass!

Rat blinked. A neuron shot yellow light below him. Had he just relived his own life? If he drank down his own memories, would that stabilize his mind? Could Rat paper over himself with himself?

He didn’t know, and didn’t want to find out. He’d lived his own awful life once before and didn’t want to do it again. So he found his own vein of memories, put his finger there, traced the wiggling synapse deeper downbrain, pushing through the rows with his eyes closed to avoid sludge getting in his eyes. He followed that wrinkled line up and around and over and down into the darkness, each step a squelch, the occasional flash of light keeping him going.

Until the wrinkle stopped. In the middle of one mound of brain matter stretching toward the ceiling, Rat brought out his phosphorescent chalk and drew a circle around the end of his line. Or rather, the beginning. His birth. From here, he could see what happened to his parents.

Rat took out his shiv and cut. Pearlescent fluid leaked out, and Rat drank it up like a man dying of thirst.

Crying, blood-soaked eyes. Wet wood that would not catch fire. Bleeding, bleeding. “Christopher,” whispered from his mother’s mouth, as she turned pale, pale, her eyes flickering, eyes closed, crying, tears turning to ice in the cold.

His mother had died giving birth to him. She hadn’t abandoned him intentionally. She’d named him Christopher, a name he’d never heard before, then given her life for him unwillingly.

She shouldn’t have! Not for this miserable fucking life. Not for his life of scrabbling and starving. Sure, he had managed to survive. But it wasn’t enough! It wasn’t enough to simply live. How dare she die? How dare she put this burden on him? This was all her fault. She was supposed to give him a better life. Wasn’t that what parents were supposed to do? They were supposed to provide, not just make him and die!

His father. Where had his father been? What kind of father wouldn’t have been there when his mother was giving birth?

Rat needed to know.

“Rat!” someone shouted. “Rat! You back here?”

Fuck! Rat slipped his shiv into his hand, hid between the wrinkles of brain. Stupid, stupid. He shouldn’t have marked the rows like he did. He should have memorized the count. Then William wouldn’t have been able to follow him back here, to do . . .

“Rat?” William shouted again. “I followed your symbols. The Lone Wolf, right?”

Wait. The squelching of the brain made moving silently near impossible. Just one set of footsteps. Why would William come this far back alone?

“Over here.” Rat stepped out of hiding. A neuron fired above them, revealing William amidst the pink and gray folded columns. Rat hid his right hand behind his back, shiv out.

“I found my answer.” William thumbed behind him, his lips shining. “I’m going home. I wanted to say goodbye.”

No. If William left, then who would Rat eat dinner with? Who would he talk to? How dare he do this to Rat? How dare he be so kind without asking for Rat to take something from someone, or give up something, just to leave now, just to leave because he got what he wanted? What about what Rat wanted? Why did no one care about what Rat wanted?

No, William needed to learn how the world worked. Rat should teach him a lesson. Rat should take his shiv and shove it into William’s throat, kill him just like Rat’s mom, because . . .

Because . . .

Rat dropped his shiv and started to cry.

There were arms around Rat. Arms that would hurt and choke and . . .

No. They were William’s arms. William was hugging Rat.

“What did you see?” Rat asked, holding onto William tight. A neuron flashed overhead.

“I told you,” William said, “you reminded me of someone, yeah? My son. He died. Kicked in the head by a horse. A stupid accident. My wife, she . . . left. I didn’t know why, and she didn’t stay to explain. And I thought, if I came here, found her memory of that moment, found where she was going, then . . .” William shook his head. “But I found a different memory. I drank it down, pure. One of my son’s. From when he was five, running around the yard, over and over, blowing dandelions, wishing for adventure, or a boat, or in a treehouse. My son lived, Rat. You and I, we’ve not been living. I gotta go do that. For him. For me.”

Rat looked up at the older man. There was some memory left shimmering on the back of his hand. So Rat got out of the hug, wiped William’s hands clean and Dandelions blowing in the chill breeze. William’s kid had been making wishes. What was Rat wishing for?

“My wife couldn’t stay in Silverburg,” William said. “But I’m gonna go back. Going to remember little Phil. I’ve got a house on Aurora Lane. Yard full of weeds. You could come. I could use some help getting everything back in shape.”

Silverburg was by the sea. And Rat wanted to see the ocean for himself, not given to him by some memory. He could go. But would he be any different there?

“I found my mom,” Rat said.

William grabbed Rat by the shoulders. “You were looking for your parents?”

He nodded.

“What did you see?”

The words tumbled out of him, and by the end he had told William everything from that memory.

“Christopher,” William said. “It’s a nice name, Rat. What will you do with it?”

What? Like Rat could just become someone new, with a new name? “Nothing,” Rat said. “Weren’t you listening? My mom’s dead, so I’ll find my father’s memories. He’ll give me the answers I need. You can help me find him.”

William smiled, shook his head. “I don’t think I can, Rat. And I don’t think the dead will have anything for you.”

The neurons stopped firing, and their row went dark.

“Go,” Rat said. “I still need to know.”

William turned back towards the thoroughfare. “Let me know what you learn, Rat. And if it was worth it.”

Rat waited until he could hear William’s steps no more.

Then he picked up his shiv, and went back to burrowing.

• • • •

That night, Rat ate alone. Without William there to talk to, he picked a spot in the corner, watching the other miners. He spooned in beans with his left hand, leaving his right free, just in case. Some of the miners, the ones who stayed near the front of the god’s brain, who actually did this for the money, were somewhat merry. But most of the others stared off into the distance, lips shimmering, lost in some memory they were searching for, or some memory they never wanted. Rat kept remembering getting beaten to near death in Frostblind Alley, but now Frostblind Alley was in a desert, and he died from dehydration, but then woke up to a smiling husband, then pranced through fields of wildflowers, before falling asleep again huddled in threadbare blankets around a toxic fire made of trash as the snow came down and down and down . . . That last memory could have been one of his. He wasn’t even sure anymore.

He’d find his answer. He’d find it. Then he could sort out which memories were actually his.

• • • •

Rat’s hair was falling out in clumps. His vision in the dark of the MindMine was improving, but outside, the harsh sun was becoming more and more blinding. He didn’t want to think about that. He needed to know. So by tracing his own synapse, he found his mother’s. He traced that back deeper into the pearlescent mind, neurons firing at random. He debated drinking down more of her memories, to know what kind of person she was. He had to splash some, because he needed to find his father through her. Merchants pinned against a wall and fleeced, gold spent on a potion that tasted like iron, drank down and down, burning her throat.

His mother Emeline had tried to stillbirth him. It didn’t take. No one has ever wanted him around. Even before he was born, he hid in the walls and refused to die. And he’d already gotten his petty revenge. She had been a thief like he was. She and his father stole from the rich and poor alike. They got pummeled by the Winter Guard. They had a stash, like he did, all spent on that rust potion that didn’t work.

So he found the man that must be his father. They had the same eyes. And he followed that synapse upbrain, until its end. He had hoped the synapse could be followed all the way back upbrain. No. He was further back than even his mother’s death. But Rat needed to know. He would have to die again to find out.

His blade shone pearlescent after he slashed, and Rat drank deep.

Four men in Snowblind Alley. Two with knives, two with cudgels. Rat’s father mouths “run” to his mother, seven months pregnant and just behind the gang. Rat’s dad runs the other way, and tries to climb a fence. Only to be yanked down, and hit in the back of the head, then stabbed in the spine, then hit again and again and the cobblestones turn dark.

Rat slipped and nicked his index finger as he fell. His shiv had cut him! He sucked on the wound; Cobblestones turned dark; He couldn’t move. He was no royal heir. There was no family waiting for him, no happy place. Wolfwatch had taken his parents, and in their absence, he’d become exactly like them. And the harder he looked for them, the more he lost, his mind filled with his parent’s death and that sailor on the ocean and that woman dying of thirst and dozens more. He had needed to know. Now, he knew. No one wanted him.

Except William.

Who refused to stay.

He stumbled back to the hemisphere line, following his signs. Arrows pointed upbrain, back to the surface, back to light. He could stay here, relive his parent’s lives, digging deeper into a dead past. He could hunt down the four men who killed his father. He could head upbrain, collect his wages, treat this like any other job, maybe take his own name. He had gotten that.

But he needed to know.

Not what happened to his parents, but why. Why any of it had happened. Why any of them existed. Why anyone existed at all.

The researchers theorized that, all the way down, a synapse joined the two hemispheres. The dead god’s first memory. If there was a reason for living, for why Rat had to be alive, he’d find it there. He’d drink every memory if he had to.

Rat turned toward the past and shuffled into the dark.

• • • •

A carpenter building a house. A huntress whipping a spear into the sea. A child burnt alive. A knight winning a joust. An endless, muddy battlefield. A tidal wave crushing a town. A town rebuilding from a hurricane. A family huddled in a cave, playing music. A lizard eating flies. A bird soaring through the air. A rat darting between roots. A microbe subdividing. He went back and back and back and drank and drank and drank. His phosphorescent chalk stopped glowing. Occasionally, he passed other MindMiners, alive or dead, he couldn’t tell. Neurons fired, and every step was a squelch. Bits of brain coated his eyes, and everything shone mother-of-pearl. And he went back, and back, and the god’s mind never ended.

Months or years or decades later, Rat fell, hungry. He took out his shiv, and he picked a synapse at random, and cut, and drank, and—

The shiv bounced on the floor of the brain, lost in the darkness. Nothing. Nothing, this black, black void without the light of a single star. He could keep going. He should keep going backward. There was supposed to be an answer. There needed to be an answer! A reason. A reason Rat had to brain Bobby Bouler, a reason he needed to stab Semlin in the throat, a reason he needed to not go with William to Aurora Lane. And if he kept going, he could find it. His tongue felt like it was falling off, his hair was gone, he’d dropped his shiv, and he could go further. He would be the rat in the maze of this fucking mind until he got the answer. He would eat brain matter as spittle fell from his lips. He would walk until his boots fell apart, until his shirt tore off of him in strips like dead skin, until it even felt good to step barefoot upon the squelch below, to be enveloped and consumed by his warren. He would drink darkness until all he could recall was empty, like the pit of his stomach, and he’d see who lasted longer! His hunger or this fucking god’s mind!

But he’d gotten turned around. He looked forward and backward and in his laughing and spasming and screaming, he wasn’t sure which way was up. A pair of neurons crossed paths over his head. He laughed and shivered and it was so dark and he was so alone. He had always been so alone.

He didn’t know which way to go. He could only pick a direction and wish on a dandelion he didn’t have that it was the right one.

One way was towards answers. Maybe. Maybe, past the skeletons and the bile, where the neurons either fire constantly or not at all, Rat would find the beginning. Perhaps he’d find his answers.

But his mother had given him a name. And William had asked him what he’d do with it. Christopher. A name given by a dead thief who didn’t want him, but a name nonetheless. His name. One he didn’t have to scrounge or steal or forge. And while Rat scrabbled in the dark, Christopher could . . .

“William,” Christopher said to the dead god that was absolutely listening. “I’m coming. Aurora Lane. I remember. I’m coming.”

Christopher kicked the shiv aside as he walked forward into the darkness.

He hoped he was heading toward the ocean.