That night she parked her Jeep on a residential street a few blocks away, and approached the Karger building under the cover of the trees and shrubs. The side door she came to had an electronic security lock with a card and keypad entry system, so she brought the locking device into her shaman dream, felt out the quantum level possibility of the lock releasing spontaneously, and glamoured it open. She was in.

Dema dream-shifted into snake form to crawl to the high-security lab area. She thought of it as her stealth mode, because in this form, with a snake's natural infrared detectors, she could sense infrared security laser trip beams and slip under them. Her reptilian metabolism meant her heat signature wouldn't show up brightly on infrared scanners, and her long snake body sensed vibrations in the floor and would detect any approaching guard details. She kept her coloring dark as she started in, but with the octopus camouflage trick Kore has shown her, she thought she would be able to alter her coloring to blend in with the background, and could probably go unnoticed in plain sight in the dimly lit corridors.

When she reached the lab door she rose up out of snake form to stand there Lamia pale. Her reasoning was that if she happened to get caught on some security camera she would not be identified, but in truth it was easy to be the Lamia here, because she had already opened herself to the monkey dream, and it was not pleasant.

The door had another electronic security lock, and she glamoured this one open too. The indicator light stayed green, so she hadn't set off any alarms.

Once inside, her rapport with the animals in their cages kept them from screaming and making a racket, but their minds were in various states of distress, not at all like the feeling of freedom she had felt from the monkeys on the Catemaco islands. Just as Sarah had said, these monkeys were sick, from infections they had been deliberately given or from drugs that might or might not cure them.

She walked from cage to cage, looking at the charts hung on them. She could not read all the details, but she knew what she was not seeing. These charts did not agree with what the disclosure documents said was supposed to be going on here. Her cold Lamia wrath came closer to the surface as she scanned the charts and felt the abnormal mental states of the monkeys that were being subjected to these experiments. This was not simply a trickle of the blood of innocents. It was more like a river.

Her focus was on the monkeys, absorbing their monkey-dream. Distorted as their mental state was, the task was unpleasant, but it continued to rouse her Lamia nature, and that reinforced her will.

Deep in the dream state, she had become less than alert to her physical surroundings, and did not detect the approach of a security team until a voice by the door said, "Hey you! No one is authorized to be in here at this time of night! Stop whatever it is you're doing and come with us!"

She bowed her head and let the cloud of white hair fall forward as she turned toward them, so they would not get a good look at her face. There were three of them, and as the first one approached the other two moved out to the sides to block her path to the door. They were not drawing guns, but they were preparing to get physical.

As they closed in on her, she took a step forward and abruptly raised her knee to her chest, then snapped her foot out with a thrust that took the first guard just below the diaphragm and knocked the wind out of him. He went down on his knees. At the same time she raised her arm to block a grab from the guard on her right side, and followed through with a backhand blow to his temple that dazed him and brought him to his knees as well. Then as the third guard stepped toward her she dropped into a crouch, and when he leaned down to grab her she sprang back up so that her shoulder took him hard on the chin. With all three down, she hurried on by them and out the door into the corridor.

Once there she dropped to the floor and went into snake form, gliding rapidly down the long hall, hugging the wall. In a few moments she heard running footsteps behind her, and froze, going into 'octopus mode' so that her coloring would match the wall and floor under her. The three guards ran straight on by her, guns drawn, and disappeared past the end of the corridor.

She crawled on, making her way back out the same way she had come in. Alarms were sounding, but if the security system had a lockdown mode it was only against unauthorized entry. She had no problem slipping out the door and into the cover of the ornamental shrubbery lining the walls. In a few minutes she was back in her Jeep, and on the way home. Mission accomplished.