Metro Inn

The Metro Inn wasn’t a hotel so much as a confession booth with plumbing. The neon sign out front sputtered like it was dying by choice rather than neglect. The lobby smelled faintly of stale smoke and disinfectant that had given up the fight years ago.

When Keira first walked in nineteen nights ago, the clerk hadn’t asked questions. He’d just looked her up and down, assumed “runaway or hooker,” and named his price. She paid for a month in cash and added an extra envelope for what he called the premium package: no name, no records, no cameras, no memory of her existence.

He never made eye contact after that. He liked uncomplicated transactions.

Room twelve greeted her with its usual perfume of cheap cleaner and old secrets. She locked the door, slid the chain into place, and dropped her bag onto the desk. The wallpaper peeled in one corner. The window overlooked a brick wall instead of the street. Privacy by architectural accident.

Good enough.

Keira powered up her rig. The interface bloomed to life in a soft cyan glow. Her Covenant alert still sat at the top of the screen:

Unknown device attempted proximity handshake.
Masked.
Within 20 meters.

She tapped it open and launched a forensic trace. Lines of code flickered past. Device signatures. RF patterns. Advertising pings. Data scrapes.

Then a familiar digital stench hit her.

“Seriously?” she muttered.

The source wasn’t a stalker.
Wasn’t a bounty hunter.
Wasn’t her parents’ hired creep.

It was McDonald’s.

Specifically: a franchise-owned local network using a whole suite of “legal but morally fossilized” tracking tech.
Passive Bluetooth probes.
Wi-Fi handshake sniffers.
Signal triangulation to estimate dwell time and foot traffic.

All to push coupon notifications and measure whether people walked past or came inside.

Corporate surveillance dressed up as “customer engagement.”

“Congratulations,” Keira sighed. “I got spooked by a hash brown.”

She sat back in her chair, rubbing her eyes. Her heartbeat had dropped from run to annoyed.

She traced the rest just to be sure:

No law enforcement flags.
No criminal routing hubs.
No spoofed cell towers.
No shadowhandprints she recognized.

Just McDonald's, trying to decide if the girl on the bus liked breakfast deals.

“Idiots,” she muttered, closing the trace. “Greasy, data-harvesting idiots.”

She leaned back, letting the tension bleed out of her shoulders.
Tonight hadn’t been danger.
Just capitalism.

Still… she added a note to her log:

DAY 19:
Threat level — false alarm.
Source: predatory advertising.
Countermeasure: block cheap restaurant pings.

She saved the log, encrypted it, and watched it vanish into her local vault.

Then she cracked her knuckles, pulled her hoodie off her shoulders, and settled in.

There were better things to worry about than fry-grease surveillance.