Marcus nodded sagely, pulling a heavy box from the top shelf. "A repeater? No. You don't want a repeater. That’s like shouting a message across a canyon; by the time it gets there, it’s just an echo of an echo. You want a Mesh System."

He held the box like a holy relic. It featured three identical white nodes that looked like high-end air fresheners.

He hit 'Send' on a 2GB file that had been stuck in his outbox for days. The progress bar didn't crawl; it sprinted. For the first time in a month, the hum of the house felt less like an obstacle and more like a circuit.

"I need a signal repeater," Elias said, his voice a mix of desperation and caffeine withdrawal. "My router is in the basement. My office is in the attic. There’s a kitchen, a master bedroom, and apparently a lead-lined Faraday cage somewhere in between."