The entrance Eli found was not on any map.
It began behind a curtain of roots forty metres below the sealed stone door and descended almost vertically into darkness.
"Your father showed you this?" Naya asked.
"Once. I was sixteen. He told me never to use it."
"Your family has a very strange relationship with useful information."
Eli lowered a rope into the shaft. "You can complain after we survive."
"You keep promising me that."
"Motivation."
They descended.
The air changed first.
Cold. Metallic. Stale.
Then came the smell of old water and something Naya could not name.
The tunnel widened into corridors reinforced with concrete beneath the natural rock. Rusted electric fixtures hung from ceilings. Old military cables followed walls. In places, newer stonework had been laid over older carvings, as if Daramola's engineers had built inside something that existed before them.
"This is bigger than I imagined," Naya whispered.
"That's because you have a healthy imagination."
"I came into a haunted forest looking for stolen gold."
"Fair point."
They found the first skeleton at a junction.
It still wore a military belt.
The second was behind a steel door.
The third had one hand trapped beneath fallen stone.
Naya stopped counting.
At the next chamber, Eli touched her arm.
"Wire."
A thin copper strand crossed the floor.
They stepped over it.
Five metres later another wire appeared at ankle height.
Then pressure plates.
Then a corridor with holes drilled into both walls.
"Darts?" Naya whispered.
"Or bullets."
"Wonderful."
They moved slowly.
Behind them, faintly, came the echo of men's voices.
Victor had entered.
The tunnels became a race.
Naya and Eli hurried without running, every step requiring care. Once a section of floor collapsed beneath Naya and she barely caught the edge. Eli hauled her up just as stones fell into darkness below.
Then the floor failed again.
This time the crack split between them.
"Naya!"
She dropped.
Her hands scraped stone.
She fell through dust, struck a sloping surface and slid into darkness.
"NAYA!"
Her torch vanished somewhere behind her.
She landed hard on a flat stone floor.
Pain burst through her hip.
For several seconds she could not breathe.
Above, Eli's voice echoed faintly.
"I'm here!" she shouted.
"Are you hurt?"
"I don't know yet!"
She forced herself upright.
A narrow passage extended ahead, lit by a weak line of daylight from some hidden crack.
"Find another way," Eli called. "Don't move too far."
Then gunfire echoed through the upper tunnels.
Naya's heart clenched.
"Eli!"
No answer.
More shots.
She had no choice.
She moved.
The passage curved downward.
Symbols appeared along the wall. Her grandfather's symbol. Then words cut into the stone in English.
FALSE WALL.
LEFT SIDE.
Her grandfather had been here.
Naya's breath caught.
She pressed the left wall.
Nothing.
She searched until her fingers found a recessed stone.
The wall shifted inward with a grinding sound.
Beyond it waited darkness.
Naya entered.
Her small spare torch flickered to life.
Gold answered.
Not metaphorical gold.
Real gold.
Bars stacked in military crates. Coins spilling from rotted sacks. Jewelry sealed in glass cases. Carved ivory, bronze masks, royal staffs, gemstones and ceremonial objects arranged like the inventory of a stolen nation.
Naya stood motionless.
"Oh my God."
Crates of old currency lined another wall. Some were Nigerian notes. Others held dollars, pounds, francs.
This was enough wealth to change generations.
Enough to build cities.
Enough to destroy people.
Then she saw the chest.
It was ordinary compared with everything around it.
Black metal. Rusted lock.
Her grandfather's initials had been scratched into the lid.
C.O.
Naya opened it.
The treasure vanished from her mind.
Inside were photographs.
Government memos.
Signed orders.
Bank records.
Lists of names.
Reports of arrests that never officially happened.
Photographs of bodies.
Photographs of officials standing beside sealed crates.
And envelopes marked with family names that still appeared on television every week.
Daramola.
Bako.
Adewale.
Balogun.
Nwosu.
Names attached to corporations, political parties, media houses and foundations.
Naya turned pages with trembling hands.
Her grandfather had not been chasing treasure.
He had been chasing a country-sized crime scene.
A photograph slid onto the floor.
Naya bent to pick it up.
President Adewale Daramola stood beside crates of gold.
Next to him was a younger Gabriel Eze.
Eli's father.
Naya stared.
A typed statement had been clipped behind the photograph.
LOGISTICS COORDINATION: G. EZE.
TRANSFER OF MATERIALS TO CHAMBER.
DISPOSAL OF WITNESSES: ROUTE THREE.
Naya's stomach turned.
"No."
Footsteps sounded behind her.
She spun.
Eli entered the chamber, bleeding from the forehead.
Relief crossed his face.
"You're alive."
Naya held up the photograph.
The relief disappeared.
"What is that?"
"Your father."
Eli took it.
His face emptied.
"No."
"There's more."
He read the statement.
"No."
"He helped them."
"He couldn't have."
"It's his name. His photograph."
"He told me he found out later."
"Maybe he lied."
Eli looked as if she had struck him.
"He spent his life protecting this place."
"Maybe he was protecting the truth," Naya said. "Or maybe he was protecting himself."
A pistol clicked.
"That's the problem with fathers," Victor said from the doorway. "They leave us debts and call them legacies."
Two armed men stood behind him.
Victor held the metal disc in one gloved hand.
"Thank you for finding the inconvenient entrance."
Eli moved slightly in front of Naya.
Victor smiled. "Still playing guardian? Your father was better at it."
Eli's jaw tightened.
"You knew him?"
"My grandfather did."
Victor walked into the chamber, gaze drifting across the gold without wonder.
Naya noticed.
"You don't care about the treasure."
"Oh, I care. I'm just not foolish enough to think money is the most valuable thing in this room."
He pointed toward the documents.
"Those papers can collapse governments."
Naya said, "That's why the president sent you."
Victor's smile thinned.
"President Emmanuel Daramola sent me to recover family property."
"Stolen government property."
"History is often a dispute over labels."
"And your family?"
Victor's eyes sharpened.
Naya lifted one of the Bako files.
"You saw your name, didn't you?" she asked. "You're not protecting only him."
For the first time, Victor looked angry.
"Give me the box."
"No."
He shot Eli.
The sound inside the chamber was enormous.
Eli spun and crashed against a crate.
"ELI!"
The bullet had struck high in his side.
Naya dropped beside him.
Victor's gun remained steady.
"The box."
Naya looked at Eli.
He whispered, "Don't."
Victor's men moved closer.
Naya threw the box.
Not to Victor.
Into the fire pit near the chamber wall where Eli's flare had landed during his entry.
Victor lunged.
Naya lunged too.
The box struck stone and opened.
Documents scattered.
One of Victor's men grabbed Naya.
She drove her elbow backward into his throat.
Eli tackled the second man despite the gunshot wound.
Victor reached for the papers.
Naya kicked his arm away.
He hit her across the face with the pistol.
White light burst behind her eyes.
She fell among spilled gold bars.
Eli and Victor collided.
Victor was stronger than he looked and far less controlled than his suits suggested. He drove a knee into Eli's wound. Eli gasped but caught Victor around the waist and slammed him into a crate.
The lid broke.
Gold bars cascaded across the floor.
Naya grabbed one and struck the man behind her across the knee.
Bone cracked.
He screamed.
The other gunman raised his rifle.
Eli shoved Victor into him.
The rifle fired into the ceiling.
Rock dust rained down.
Victor caught Eli with a savage punch.
Naya threw herself onto Victor's back.
He flipped her over his shoulder.
She hit the floor hard.
"Burn it!" Victor shouted.
One of his men threw fuel over the scattered documents.
Naya saw the lighter.
"NO!"
Flame raced across paper.
She crawled through the heat, grabbing files and beating out fire with her jacket.
Eli fought Victor among the crates.
The chamber shook.
Everyone froze.
A deep scrape came from the tunnel.
Then another.
Victor looked toward the entrance.
"What was that?"
Eli's face changed.
Naya stared at the metal disc still in Victor's hand.
"You brought it here."
The stone doorway cracked.
A black-green head smashed through.
One of Victor's men screamed and fired.
The bullets struck scales.
The serpent opened its mouth.
Victor whispered, "What the hell is that?"
Naya picked up a bundle of surviving documents.
"The thing you brought here."