The latch gave at sixty seconds.
Not dramatically, unfortunately. No cinematic click. No tiny metallic declaration of victory like the movies insisted locks were obligated to provide.
Real mechanisms, especially old ones, possessed the bad manners of reality. They resisted until they didn't. Patient pressure. A little tension. Then the spring-loaded latch finally slipped back from inside the door with the exhausted compliance of something that had spent decades believing nobody would ever bother opening it properly again.
Proxy pushed.
The door swung inward.
The corridor beyond was empty. Emergency lighting washed the walls in that unpleasant institutional red-white half-glow that made distances feel dishonest.
Running sounds echoed from the east, fading now. Meaning the guards had already reached whatever had caused the earlier thuds. Or thought they had. Which wasn't the same thing.
He turned back toward Jinx's cell.
"Yes," he said. "If you want to come."
