Location:Secondary Federation Facility — Coastal Research Compound / Primary Facility Surface (relay)
Date/Time:TC1853.12.01 — During Extraction
Getting Craine out of the cell was the easy part.
Getting him to stay upright was something else entirely.
The man made it four steps before his left leg locked. Not a stumble — a mechanical seizure, the knee joint freezing mid-stride with a grinding sound that set Taron's teeth on edge. Craine caught himself against the corridor wall with one cybernetic arm, the matte-gray alloy scraping concrete, and waited. Five seconds. Ten. The leg released with a sharp click and resumed bending, but the movement was wrong — too smooth for the first quarter of the arc, then jerky, then smooth again. Like a mechanism running without lubricant.
