Elias saw the chance and moved before fear could slow him. He slammed both palms onto the manual console and entered the last combination he had sworn never to use in a live field: staged brake, anchor clamp, emergency frame collapse delay. It was not a return sequence. It was a shutdown knife, meant to kill the machine in place if all other control failed.

The command hung.

The lever on the right side of the cradle was protected under a latch for a reason. Pulling it during active displacement could tear the field apart around him. Spatial mismatch on reintegration. Pressure shock. Matter shear. All the ugly words Amara had thrown at him in the lab upstairs, all the ones he had heard and filed and answered, none of them abstract now.

He hit the latch with the heel of his hand. It snapped back. He seized the lever.

For one sick second it would not move.

He braced one foot against the frame, felt pain spark up his shin and into his hip, and hauled with everything the harness allowed. The lever came loose in a burst, ripping down through its arc. The machine answered like a living thing in pain.

Light slammed sideways. Sound vanished under a crushing burst of white static. His head snapped forward and struck the restraint hard enough to throw sparks through his vision. The whole cradle dropped an inch as if the world beneath it had fallen away, then crashed down again. Metal shrieked. Something heavy broke loose behind him. The straps bit into his chest and held.

Then stillness hit.