Barry started small. He collected salt from the pretzels in the vending machine. He peeled the foil lining from coffee packets. Every night at 2:17 AM, when the guard, a narcoleptic named Grover, nodded off, Barry worked. He dissolved the salt in a capful of water from his sink, creating a weak electrolyte. He used the foil to bridge two exposed wires in the heating vent, creating a tiny, precise current.

It crumbled like dry cake.

And outside, across the salt flat, sixty-three escaped inmates vanished into the white haze—each one carrying a piece of the map Barry had chalked onto their cell floors weeks ago, none of them knowing he had been their ghost teacher all along.

But Barry had a secret. He had discovered a flaw.

The break came on a Tuesday. A dust storm had knocked out the main generator. The prison ran on backup—a sputtering diesel engine that hummed at exactly 60 hertz. Barry had been waiting for that frequency. He connected his jury-rigged battery to the solenoid of the door-lock magnet. At the precise moment the backup generator dipped, Barry’s current surged. The lock clicked.

A geyser erupted from the teacher’s podium. Guards slipped on the suddenly flooded floor. In the chaos, Barry didn’t run. He walked. He walked straight to the wall between Cellblock 4 and the library. He placed his palm against a specific cinderblock—the one he’d been dissolving with the acidic paste from crushed antacid tablets for six months.