By Aryn

Heero stepped into the lobby of Felton & Fermin Drug Company and headed straight for the stuffy looking secretary.

"Excuse me, I'm here to see a Mr. Cullen Gilmore."

She looked up at him and blinked her eyes behind large, coke-bottle glasses. "And your name please?"

"Heero Yuy. Colonel Une called yesterday from the Preventers."

"Ah yes. One moment please." She picked up the phone on the desk, hit a button and paged Gilmore over the loudspeaker. When she hung the phone up, she turned to Heero again. "Hopefully he heard that."

"Sound in the lab isn't good?"

"No, sound in the lab is perfect. Mr. Gilmore wears headphones when he works. Half the time he misses his pages. He's one of those eccentric geniuses that you tend to excuse due to their gifts."

Heero nodded his head in understanding. This was going to be a very interesting interview. Five minutes later, a short man with black hair, wrinkled shirt and even more wrinkled pants, came sliding through the elevator doors. Judging from the lab coat and headphones, Heero realized this was his man.

"You from the Preventers?"

Heero liked the upfront manner. Perhaps he wasn't all that bad. "Yes, I am. My name is-"

"What happened to the woman that called yesterday?" The scientist immediately turned the to seceratory. "Miss Thompson, what happened to that woman?"

"She sent Mr. Yuy, Dr. Gilmore."

"Who's Mr. Yuy?"

"He is, Doctor."

Gilmore looked back at Heero. "You're Mr. Yuy?"

"Yes."

"From the Preventers?"

"Yes."

"Ah!" The doctor snapped his fingers and turned on his heels, heading back to the elevators. "Well come now. We can talk in my, uh, my, what is it again?"

Heero looked back at the secretary, who just rolled her eyes. "Your office, Dr. Gilmore."

"That's it! My office. We can talk in my office."

Heero stepped up to the elevator doors and waited by the jittery doctor. In a swift movement, the doctor turned around to face him.

"Do you know where my office is, Mr. Yuy?"

"Uh, no, I don't."

Miss Thompson spoke up from the lobby desk. "It's on the fifth floor, Dr. Gilmore."

"That's right. Fifth floor."

The elevator dinged and the scientist jumped through the doors, almost slamming into them before they opened. Heero just shook his head in disbelief. How he was going to get any information out of this guy was beyond him.

The office was a mess. Papers and computer disks littered the desk, bookshelves, even floor space. Half-eaten hoagies were strewn about as well, along with half empty cans of flat soda. And Heero thought the oddness lay with just the headphones. Swiping off a chair and dumping the papers onto the emptiest spot on the floor, Heero sat and waited for the doctor to take a seat across from him. Instead, the man just paced back and forth. He would open the blinds, walk across the room, look out the window and cross back to close the blinds again. The constant motion was beginning to get on Heero's nerves.

"So," the doctor finally sat down in his desk chair. "What did you say your name was?"

"Heero Yuy. I came on behalf of the Preventers."

"A woman called from there yesterday."

"Yes, Colonel Une."

"That's her name. I spent half the night trying to remember."

"She said that you knew of a person who had a disk that contained all the blueprints for the five Gundams."

"Seven Gundams."

Heero blinked in surprise. "Seven?"

The doctor jumped up from his chair and began pacing frantically around the room. "That's right, seven. Oh, what did you call them, the Wing Zero, Deathscythe, Heavyarms, Sandrock, Altron or Shenlong, the Tallgeese II and my personal favorite the Eypon. Granted, Tallgeese II and Eypon weren't considered Gundams, but they were state of the art enough to technically be considered Gundams. Anyway, the disk has all seven blueprints on it."

"So why wait this long before telling us this information?"

"It slipped my mind. Just the other day, or was it yesterday? No, it couldn't have been yesterday, it must have been...maybe it was last week..."

"Dr. Gilmore."

"Yes?"

"Why did you wait so long before telling us about the disk?"

"The history channel was doing a documentary on the Eve Wars the other night. I caught sight of a Gundam and remembered the disk."

"How did you know about the disk?"

"I was a tech that worked on the Wing Zero with Dr. J. I saw him copy a disk one night before going home."

"Do you know who he gave the disk to?"

"Well, there's only one person that comes to mind. There was another tech that came in from time to time and helped with the computer systems. I never met her, but Dr. J had total confidence in her. As I remember it, she was the one that worked on a computer system for the Gundams that was later tweaked into the Zero system. After I saw him copy the disk, she never came back again. It's only a guess."

"What was her name?"

"Ceres. Ceres Jarleth. Very plain looking, would blend in everywhere."

"What does she look like?"

"Blond hair, brown eyes. Someone you wouldn't look twice at. I only did because she was the only girl in the lab."

"Anything else?"

The doctor thought for a few minutes before shaking his head excessively. "No, no, I think that's it."

"Thank you for your time, Dr. Gilmore. We'll let you know if anything happens."

"Thank you, thank you. Oh, before you go Mr. Yuy."

Heero turned around to see all of the eccentrics of the doctor melt away and reveal a brilliant man. The eyes lost their wildness and the shaking hands calmed. Even the voice seemed more normal.

"Ceres isn't a dangerous person. It's just the information that she's carrying is dangerous."

"What are you asking me?"

"Don't hurt her. She'll give you the disk. Just ask for it."

Heero wondered if perhaps the man really was crazy. But for the sake of argument, Heero nodded his head and left the building.

_____________________________

Ceres wiped off the polished dark wood counter top and threw the towel over her shoulder. The smell of mixed flavors of coffee drifted through the small coffee shop. Mostly lit by the artificial sunlight of the colony, the shop's walls were lined with books, tables filling in the space between the shelves. It was an old bookshop that she had converted into her pride and joy, CiCi's Cafe. She had only started it a year ago; it had been an eighteenth birthday present from her late father. Actually, it was just a large amount of money that he had left her when he died. It just took his lawyers three years to find her.

Since it was so late in the day, business tended to slack off. At the moment, there was no one in the cafe. She looked her watch. It was almost six, closing time. Wiping out a few large mugs for the morning, Ceres hung her towel up and reached for her keys. As she leaned down to put the extra glasses away, the bell over the door rang. That was odd.

Looking up from the bar, Ceres fought the urge to duck back down and hide. It was him. After all those years, he had returned. To kill her? Or perhaps, he didn't even remember her. She would like to believe that. Tossing her long hair over her shoulder, she tried to calmly address the young man in front of her.

"Can I help you?"

The young Japanese man looked around the empty cafe. "Are you still open?"

"Yes, I am. I'm open till six."

He looked down at his watch. "It's ten of six now."

Ceres smiled. "Well, you're here before six, so I'll serve you. What do you want?"

He sat down at the counter. "Whatever's easiest for you to make."

Ceres went into the back and returned with a chicken salad sandwich and coke. She watched as he silently ate his food, laid the money on the counter and got up to leave. She slipped the money into her pocket and picked up the dishes when he turned around at the door.

"That was good, but I liked the hamburgers you used to serve better."

Ceres let the plate in her hand slip. It hit the floor and broke into three pieces. Dropping to her knees she grabbed the pieces and quickly stood back up. By the time she had done that, the door to the cafe shut, leaving her alone again.