“Shut off the breaker,” I told Julian. My voice was steady, cutting through the rising panic in the hallway. “Julian. Look at me. Go downstairs and flip the main breaker to the second-floor heating circuits. Right now.”
Julian bolted down the stairs, his footsteps thundering against the wood.
A second later, the green light on the black plastic box went dark. The faint, high-frequency hum died.
Clara was on her knees on the hallway floor, sobbing uncontrollably, her forehead pressed against the baseboard near the hole Julian had torn open. “We were poisoning them. We did this to them. We wanted the house to be perfect…”
“Clara, stop,” I said, dropping to my knees beside her, grabbing her shoulders firmly. “You didn’t do this. A subcontractor cut a corner, or an unscrupulous HVAC company sold you an unvetted industrial masking system disguised as an air purifier, and they walled it up instead of mounting it safely in a utility room. You fought for them. You had every environmental test done.”
