Gabrielle was having the dream again. She was making passionate love to Reverend Eric Camden, riding him like a stallion, riding, riding, about to reach her climax, when…

A loud banging on the door startled her awake.

"Gabrielle LaBelle?  Open up.  This is the Glenoak Police Department," a loud, male voice boomed.

"Good Lord, such a racket!  Are you trying to give a poor old woman a heart attack?"

"Ma'am, we need you to open the door."

Gabrielle rose from her nap and tiptoed across her room, down the hallway, and over to the basement door.  She hoped she could just placate the officer long enough to make her way downstairs and sneak out the basement exit.  "Keep your pants on.  I can't get to the door so fast in my old age."

"I can see you in there!" came the loud, male voice behind the front door.  "Don't even think about trying to sneak out through your basement door.  I've got backup covering that exit too."

Gabrielle wondered how the officer could possibly have seen her sneaking toward her basement, since there were no windows in her hallway.  Nonetheless, she figured it best to take him at his word.  Besides, if she could keep the doddering old woman routine going for a little while, maybe he would eventually just leave her alone.  She turned around and crossed to her front door, muttering under her breath all the way.  Upon opening it, she found Kevin Kinkirk squinting and grinning insincerely at her.

"May I come in, Mrs. LaBelle?"

"It's Ms., and I suppose I don't have any choice but to let you in, do I?"  Gabrielle motioned with her unbroken arm for him to enter.

Kevin rudely pushed his way forward into the narrow hallway.  He turned to face Gabrielle and asked, "Ms. LaBelle, where were you this morning?"

"This morning?  Oh, well, let's see.  The memory's not what it used to be.  I do remember that first thing this morning, I was here, sleeping."

"Did you, by any chance, wake up and go anywhere?" Kevin asked pointedly.

"Why, yes, I did wake up.  As for going anywhere, hmm, let's see.  I do seem to recall riding the bus somewhere this morning.  Where was it?"

"That's the million-dollar question," Kevin intoned patronizingly.

Since the cop didn't seem to be buying the dotty old lady routine, Gabrielle shifted tactics.  Time for an abrupt subject change.  "Hey, you look familiar.  Do I know you from somewhere?"

Kevin's jaw tightened.  "Answer the question.  Where did you go this morning?"

"Well, I got on the bus."

Kevin tapped his foot impatiently.  "We've established that.  Where exactly did you go on the bus?"

"Now just slow down, young man.  I need a minute to think."  Gabrielle brought her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes as if the effort were quite a chore.  "I seem to remember…yes, I went to see a friend of mine's son and his family."

"Could I have the name of the person whose house you went to?"

"Oh, sure.  If I can just remember it…"

"Just give me the name!"

The cop obviously wasn't going to leave her alone.  It was time to throw in the towel.  "Alright, alright.  His name is Eric Camden."

Kevin's eyes widened.  "Aha!  I knew it!  It's your fault Lucy's in the hospital!"

Gabrielle was genuinely shocked.  "Oh dear.  Lucy's in the hospital?  How on earth did that happen?"

"She fell off a horse and hit her head.  But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Kevin asked sarcastically.

"Excuse me?  I'm sorry to hear that, but what on earth does it have to do with me visiting her father's house?"

"The brownies.  It was the brownies, wasn't it?"

Gabrielle tried her best to look innocently confused.  "Brownies?  Hon, I have to tell you, you're not making a whole lot of sense here."

"You're the one who brought the laced brownies over, aren't you?"

"Whoa, darling.  I didn't bring any brownies over there, let alone 'laced' ones."

Kevin stuck his finger up to Gabrielle's face.  "Don't lie to me."

Gabrielle stared him down.  "I'm not lying."

"Oh no?  Then how did brownies laced with various controlled substances find their way into the Camden kitchen?"

Gabrielle shrugged.

"You don't know, huh?  Well, guess what.  I ran some fingerprints off the brownie pans I found in the kitchen, and it turns out they matched yours in the criminal database."

 "I don't see how that's possible, since I've never been fingerprinted before," Gabrielle fibbed.  Kevin raised a mistrusting eyebrow, and Gabrielle sighed.  "Alright, I admit it.  You're too smart for me.  I did bring the brownie pans over, and I mixed the brownies and got them started baking in the oven for the Camdens to enjoy.  But as for the narcotics making their way into the brownies, I can't explain that."

"Mm-hmm," Kevin squinted at her suspiciously.  For a moment Gabrielle thought he would just leave her alone with her partial admission, but then he began to scan her tiny apartment.  He walked around, checking out her little bedroom, looking under the mattress and in her drawers.

"See anything in there you like?" Gabrielle asked smartly as he rifled through some of her panties.

"Don't start with me," Kevin snapped back.  He walked over to her tiny bathroom, opening the medicine cabinet and checking under the lid of the toilet water tank.  Next he entered her cramped kitchen, where he searched every drawer and cabinet.  Still he found nothing.

Then his eyes wandered over to the basement door Gabrielle had made a move toward earlier.  "Ms. LaBelle, would you please open your basement door for me?"

"Oh, there's nothing you'd be interested in down there…"

Kevin saw the fear in her eyes and pressed harder.  "Open it!"

Nervously, Gabrielle crossed over and opened the creaky door.  Kevin reached up and pulled the cord to turn on the lone, bare light bulb, revealing damp, dank, dark stone walls.  He tromped down the rickety old wooden staircase.   Meanwhile, Gabrielle grabbed her heaviest cast-iron pan from the kitchen and followed him down.

When he reached the bottom landing and looked around, Kevin stood in awe.  "Wow.  This is even worse than I expected.  You've got yourself quite a drug lab down here, Ms. LaBelle.  I'm afraid you're under arr…"

But before Kevin could even finish his sentence, Gabrielle had brought the cast-iron pan down upon his head with as much force as her good arm could muster.  The blow was strong enough that it almost certainly would have knocked a normal human being unconscious, or at least dazed him enough to disable him.  Kevin Kinkirk, however, was no ordinary human being.

"That, Ms. LaBelle, was a serious mistake," Kevin said as he snapped his head back into place atop his neck.

Gabrielle dropped the iron pan in shock.  "My God, aren't you in some kind of pain?  That sounded horrible."

"No, I'm not."

"But, your head…"

"Is fine.  I know you're wondering how that could be.  How could I absorb a blow like that and not be hurt?  Well, I might as well explain everything.  It all starts with a man you know quite well."  Gabrielle stared at him blankly, still trying to figure out why this guy wasn't unconscious on the floor.  "Did you ever wonder what Eric Camden's father did after he retired from the Marines?"

"The Colonel?  What does he have to do with anything?"

"I'm getting to that.  The fact is that he didn't actually retire from the Marines.  Instead he was recruited by the CIA to work on a top-secret project."

Gabrielle nodded.  "You know, that doesn't surprise me.  He was always quite the go-getter.  Actually, that reminds me of how I first met him when he was in the military.  Oh, it's a lovely story.  We were both stationed in South Korea.  He was just a young ensign, and I was a civilian nurse.  My goodness, we had a passionate fling, I tell you!"

Kevin interrupted, "Ms. LaBelle, that is information that I frankly don't need to know.  Now as I was saying before, the Colonel became a top secret agent with access to some of the most advanced, highly classified technology our country possessed.  And with that technology he and his team created me, Kevin Kinkirk, also known as the T-1000, out of robotic parts and living human tissue.  I was designed to be the ultimate undercover agent for the purposes of espionage and super-secret warfare.  However, the Colonel's relationship with the Agency soured, and he decided to sneak me out from the research facility one night.  He then reprogrammed me to be the ultimate husband for one of his granddaughters, so that I could get close enough to spy on his family for him."

Gabrielle shook her head in disbelief.  "This is a lot to take in."

"I'm sure it is for your feeble human brain.  Now let me continue.  In addition, the Colonel's success in creating me also led him to try to create newer models.  Unfortunately, without the access to the high-quality materials and technology that membership in the Agency had provided him, none of the newer models were anywhere near as successful.  My brother, Ben, also known as the T-2000, suffered from major flaws in his processing capabilities.  He's not able to function at anywhere near the mental capacity that I am, and thus has much more difficulty interacting successfully with women.  He's also extremely bad with numbers.

"Good lord, I had no idea that the Colonel had been up to such things," Gabrielle commented.

"But wait, there's more," Kevin continued.  "My sister, Patty Mary, also known as the Fembot-80, failed in her mission to become the ultimate wife for Simon Camden, as she suffered from an unexplainable desire to experiment sexually with women.  She's now living in San Francisco with her girlfriend, who still doesn't know that she's a cyborg.  And then there's the cyborg that the Colonel created to act as our mother."

At the mention of his mother, Kevin shook his head.  Gabrielle wondered if it was just for show, or if the cyborg was really capable of feeling sorrow.  It was difficult to tell what emotion the half-machine was trying to project, if any.  However, if this were something he was truly feeling upset about, perhaps it could be an angle for her to play.

After collecting himself, he continued, "The Mombot was the worst failure of all.  Her body wasn't able to properly manufacture hormones in the correct amounts, causing her to malfunction and develop an unhealthy dependence on pills and alcohol to maintain her balance."

"Well as you can see, I could help her with that," Gabrielle said, motioning to her laboratory.

The T-1000 glared at her.  "How dare you joke about my mother?"

"I'm dead serious, killer.  Name her poison, I can figure out how to make it down here.  I'm the best damn nurse a patient could ever ask for.  Just ask the Colonel.  Why do you think he still keeps in touch with me?" Gabrielle winked mischievously.

Kevin smirked.  "Oh no you don't.  I see what you're doing.  You're trying to distract me from the fact that you drugged up my girlfriend and caused her to injure herself."

"Oh come on.  You don't really think I'm the one who hurt her, do you?" Gabrielle asked as charmingly as possible.

The T-1000 squinted at her.  "Yes I do, because, Ms. LaBelle, I'm programmed to solve puzzles like this.  So when I arrived at the Camden household this afternoon, saw Simon on the rooftop, discovered that his room was torn up like a speed freak's, and that unfamiliar brownie pans were downstairs in the kitchen, I started running all the possible permutations of what could have happened.  It led me to conclude that someone had brought brownies laced with narcotics into the house.  Simon, being a growing teenage boy, ate more brownies than anyone else and therefore had the most violent reaction.  He entered his room, turned it upside down, and then climbed or fell from his bedroom window.  From there, he climbed a tree and fell onto his rooftop, where he passed out.  Similarly, Lucy must have been impaired from eating your brownies when she took that fateful horse ride this afternoon.  As a formality I delivered the brownie pans to the crime lab for analysis.  Their results won't come back for a while, but I already know they'll come back positive."

"Oh, they'll come back positive," Gabrielle admitted.  "But if the boy had just stuck to the brownies in his pan, none of this would have happened.  I'll bet Ruthie didn't give my message to the family."

"What are you talking about?" Kevin asked.

"I made different brownies for each family member, and Ruthie was supposed to make sure that no one mixed them.  Ruthie and the twins just had normal brownies.  Simon and Lucy's were laced with some mind-expanding little numbers, because they really needed to look at their lives from a new perspective.  Eric's had some sexual-performance enhancers in it, because he could have used a good shagging.  And his wife's had some relaxing, mood-altering puppies in there, because lord knows that woman needed to calm the heck down."

Kevin shook his head disdainfully.  "That's sick."

Gabrielle put her hand on her hip.  "Oh that's rich, coming from a half-machine who's duped someone into becoming his girlfriend in the hopes of spying on her family.  You know, when it comes right down to it, we're not that different, you and I."

Kevin squinted.  "How do you mean?"

"We're both doing what we're doing for the good of the Camdens, out of loyalty to the Colonel."

"There is a significant difference, though," Kevin said.  "What I'm doing won't end up getting any of the Camdens hurt or killed.  Unfortunately, I can't say the same for you."  Kevin pulled his police weapon from his holster and aimed it at Gabrielle.  "You see, now that I've exposed the Colonel and myself to you, I'll have to kill you."

Gabrielle knew it was time to think fast, so she whistled.  "Wow.  I gotta hand it to the Colonel.  He did a hell of a job with you.  And he made you sexy too.  You look so hot with that gun in your hand."

Kevin smirked.  "I know."

Gabrielle laughed nervously.  "Of course you do.  But really, killing me won't be necessary.  Trust me, old Gabrielle can keep a secret.  If this underground drug lab isn't evidence of that, then I don't know what is."

"You're probably right, but I'm afraid there's no way out of it.  I'm programmed to kill anyone who discovers me."

Gabrielle decided to go back to the one thing that might disarm the cyborg:  "But who will supply your mother with the medication she needs if you kill me?"

"The Colonel has connections.  He'll find someone."

Gabrielle shook her head.  "Come on, honey.  You're not fooling this old broad.  I can tell from the look on your face she's not doing so hot right now.  Let old Gabrielle take care of her.  I can diagnose her and mix her up something just right."

Kevin tried to ignore her.  "Perhaps I could just figure out how to run this equipment myself.  I'm sure if I worked at it long enough I could figure out a formulation for her…"

Gabrielle snorted.  "Oh, that would look outstanding.  A Glenoak Police Officer running his very own drug lab?  What would you do if you got caught?"

"I wouldn't get caught.  I'm trained to be covert, remember?"  Kevin lowered his weapon.  "But there's no denying, you could help my mother better than I could."  Then he lifted his weapon again.  "But I'm programmed to kill you."  Then he lowered his weapon again.  "But you could help my mother.  But I'm programmed to kill you.  But you could help my mother.  But I'm programmed to kill you…"

Realizing that she had somehow managed to stick the T-1000 in a circular logic loop that he could not get out of, Gabrielle grabbed a gasoline can from one of her lab cabinets.  Then she laid down a gasoline trail leading from her lab equipment up the stairs to her front door.  After emptying the can, she chucked it inside the house, lit a match, tossed it on the floor, and ran away as fast as her legs would carry her.  Several seconds later, the house exploded with the T-1000 still inside.

Gabrielle picked herself up from the ground and dusted herself off.  "Hmph," she chuckled to herself.  "They haven't made the cyborg yet that could outsmart Gabrielle LaBelle.  Now that the evidence is destroyed, it's off to Mexico to lay low, drink some tequila, and take a grande siesta.  Maybe now I can finally finish that dream!"