Bendia woke and looked around with just her eyes before she decided to move. She seemed to have been missed in her hiding place in the necropolis. She crept out of her hiding space.

She had two days to finish her search before she had to call in to Mister Biles. She wanted to have something to show for the violence she had committed so far. If her backer decided to pull out of the hunt, she would be out of the resources she needed to finish the search. She definitely couldn't do all of it on her own.

She understood Biles's position. He was responsible for her, and he couldn't let anyone hurt her if he could prevent it.

And she knew she didn't have a chance of moving anything out of the city without his help. She would be stuck in the city, trying to figure out what her profit from the treasure was compared to the people shooting at her.

If she knew where her enemies were quartered, that would give her a better idea of where to go herself..

It also gave her an idea on where she could lay traps to get them off her back.

Bendia wrapped her head as she went about getting ready for the day. She decided that she needed to look at the signposts she had found. There had to be some clue where the other ones were. Maybe she had looked at them wrong.

Once she found the central sign, she could try to put together a larger team to find the door, and to fend off her rivals. She imagined Biles would love that as long as he didn't have to get more than superficially involved in things.

She didn't really want to involve others, but she had faced large organizations trying to take things from her on other hunts. More people meant less of a chance that all of them could be killed at the same time.

That wouldn't stop them from trying.

Bendia ate at a different place than the two from the night before. If she was being tracked, going to different places might confuse her watchers while she searched for the clues she needed.

Once she was finished with breakfast, she traced her steps back to the first sign she had found. She took bearings on the other two signs according to where she thought they were. Maybe a look from the roof would be the way to go for the next little bit.

She had come across other things that could be found when you looked down on them. This might be more of the same. It was time to find out before she tried anything else.

The treasure hunter looked at the various buildings around the sign. She nodded when she saw a two story place marked for clothing repair. The shop stood on the ground floor. Living quarters took up the rest of the upper floor. She spotted a ladder she could use to get to the building's roof. She climbed up as silently as she could. She pulled out her glasses and looked around at the streets below her.

She didn't see anything out of the ordinary. She decided to move across the roofs around the sign until she was sure she had what she needed. All she had to worry about was being a trespasser and being called out before she found the central sign.

Being a woman was a huge disadvantage in a country where the patriarchy was still the main driving factor.

She hoped what she was doing would be worth it after she was back in civilization.

She spotted what looked like one of the signposts in the distance. She started across the roofs to get a better look. This might be what she was looking to find.

She still needed to find the last one so she had an approximate place to look for doors into the underground. Then the search for the treasure would move into the second phase where she had to locate it before someone tried to take it from her.

The last part meant getting it out of the country and checked for value so it could be sold to a collector, or a museum. She didn't handle that part herself.

If it didn't have anything of value associated with it, Bendia might keep whatever she found herself. It wouldn't be the first time she had decided not to give her backers what they wanted. She imagined it wouldn't be the last.

She used the new find to orient herself. She could see the other signpost landmarks around her. The city had built around them, but not torn them down. That seemed odd to her, but she put the thought away. Plenty of other places had old markers the city builders couldn't be bothered with tearing up as they put other things in place.

She was glad for that. It gave her an idea where the last signpost should be. All she had to do was narrow the angle of her search and it should turn up.

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She turned in a circle and picked out several buildings that seemed to be shaped around an open space. That might be what she was looking to find. If the last post was there, the next step was trying to find the entry into the fabled underground.

She had no idea if that part of the legend was true. If it was, the search would take her down into a vast complex housing this treasure. Once she had proof of what was there, her backers would want to bring all of it up into the sunlight.

There would be others who wanted to take the treasure from her. She would have to change the directions to prevent that. And she would have to be ready to shoot again.

She knew her backers had rivals, but she ignored all that. She was there to do the legwork. Everyone was her enemy. When the treasure was declared, the pressure would lessen, but she couldn't let her guard down. She was an operator, and organizations didn't like people like her wandering around.

She should have stuck with working with the Museum of Natural History. It didn't pay that much, and the danger was there because of the places she would have worked, but she wouldn't have had to be ready to kill someone at any moment.

Bendia told herself to quit whining and headed for the clearing via the roofs jammed together. Once she was sure of her find, that would be one more thing off her back. Finding the door and calling for supplies would be the next step when she was sure.

She paused at the edge of the last roof over the square. A signpost rose in the middle of a dry fountain. She nodded at the confirmation of her theory.

She looked back at her line of travel. She imagined what everything looked like from the air. She decided that she needed to go to the signpost in the center and look around again. Maybe her answers were there.

One last look around and she would head home to her camp and hide for the night. She could look for the hidden door during the day without that much of a problem.

How long did she have before her opposition caught up with her? She needed to find the treasure and get out. She didn't want to deal with a ton of contractors chasing her through the dark.

She refused to work with partners. Some of them had tried to sell her down the river after she had did a lot of the field work to find the item in question. That had soured her on anyone else being in the field with her.

And it meant anyone else that got in her way was a legitimate target to be knocked down.

Bendia studied the central signpost from a nearby roof. Now that she was sure, she just had to find where the secret door stood. She wondered if that part existed outside of the stories she had gathered traveling the region.

There had be something. Legends and stories of adventurers falling into the depths of the Earth and returning with some treasure covered the region. Some of them used real names. There had to be a grain of truth to the tales.

Just like the city of Troy had been true, this had to be a real thing turned into a legend for the future to remember.

Bendia thought she saw something out of step with the rest of the square. She glanced around. There were too many people wandering around. If she opened up the door, others would want to go in with her. She couldn't shoot all of them, and she wasn't ready anyway. She needed to gather her gear, and wait for the square to empty before she could look around.

While she had a ticking clock in her head, she couldn't afford to rush. Any wrong move would bring the jackals in to steal her goal out from under her. It was better to be as invisible as she could until she had what she had come for, and got away.

She retreated from the roof. She had to retreat to her hole and rest until the pre-dawn hours. Then she would see about the thing she had seen. If she was right, that was the next step on her path.

Once she had her gear ready to go, she could enter the darkness and shine a light on things.

She wondered if there was more than one exit. That would make things easier for her, and prevent a bottleneck. The last thing she needed was trying to fight her way through a convention of gorillas trying to get to the treasure after she had found it.

It was a thought. She might have to look into it if she had time to explore. An easier exit would be great just on its own.

Bendia scanned the necropolis before entering it. No one seemed to be interested in where she had secured her hiding place. She decided to try to sleep the rest of the time away before looking at the square from a closer distance. It might be the last bit of sleep she would get for some time.

She hoped this was worth the effort she had already expended.

Bendia looked around again before entering her redoubt. She didn't want someone trying to kill her in the middle of the night. She settled in to get some sleep. This was the last safe place she would have until she was done with her search.

And it wasn't really that safe as far as she was concerned. She would deal with any problems that might come up as quietly as she could. She might need her hiding place when she tried to get out of the city and headed back home.

Once she found the hidden door, she would have an idea of how big a campaign she would have to mount to find the treasure and recover it.

And she knew she would have to consider just leaving what she couldn't carry for others to find and take while she was trying to get help to take the majority for her organization.

She wrapped up and tried to push her thoughts away and think about nothing. She didn't know what she had to face, what she needed, or what was there if anything. The best thing she could do was think about other things until she drifted off to sleep.

It took a while before she finally fell adrift in a sea of sand pouring away from her as she looked for the entrance to the other globe so she could save herself in the hourglass bubble. She woke up, struggling against the air.

She checked her watch. She was up a few hours earlier than she planned. She decided to start her day before the city woke up. She didn't know what the day would bring. She might as well meet it head on.

She gathered up her things and left the crypt. She walked toward the central signpost as she thought about what her next move should be. She needed to get some extra food to go with what she had. Water was also a necessity. She wouldn't know about anything else until she had a chance to look over the challenge in front of her.

She hoped things would be a little easier from that point on, but thought it wouldn't be.