Alexander Cross needed coffee.

Now, for most people, such a thought wasn't out of the ordinary. There were many people that had a cup of coffee every morning, and felt wrong if they didn't. It helped jumpstart their awareness and keep them going throughout the day. However, for Alexander, even the thought that he [i]needed[/i] coffee was unusual. After all, he had far greater stamina than most of his coworkers.

Though he had to admit that even the toughest Coordinator would be feeling drained. Sighing, he pushed his chair back, away from his desk, and rubbed at his eyes. He'd been working for hours, staring at line after line of code, and only switching from that to examine the diagnostic readouts on his second monitor. The workplace was almost silent around him; Most of his coworkers had either taken the day off, or been given the day off. The reason for this was very, very simple. Most of them weren't aware of the G-Project, though some were aware of the Astray Project. They were given the day off because the prototypes of both projects had been brought to the island overnight.

This, coincidentally, was also why Alexander had been working for roughly sixteen hours alone. The software wasn't quite finished, particularly on the Astrays. It worked, but it was rough; Very much in the prototype phase, the code used was inelegant, and in some particulars functions, prone to certain errors. Even if the code worked perfectly, it still wasn't maximized to make full use of the mobil suit's hardware. His sixteen hours had been spent trying to make every function as smoothly as possible before the prototypes were expected to be finished, even though he knew that it would be a half dozen more versions before it was really even approaching done.

And they were due to be finalized in a few hours.

Alexander really, really needed a cup of coffee. And he wouldn't have been complaining about a little help, either.