Page 81 of Bro Code

Well, because they didn’t give a shit about Riley. They weren’t looking for a solution that benefitted him.

Coach Myers and the assistant coach gathered their phones and went back to their seats. Holly pulled out her tablet again and began tapping through screens with her lips tight and brow furrowed. Louis got the feeling she was holding in some barely-contained fury, and as he got up to go back to his seat, he heard her mutter, “Gentlemen,” and scoff under her breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” She waved him off, not looking up. Then suddenly gestured at where the GM had gone down the aisle to the bathroom and said, “Did you hear that? Gentlemen. Like I’m not even here.”

Shaking her head, she went back to the tablet.

Louis went back to his seat.

He’d never heard Holly complain outright about management like that. It made him wonder if they might be able to find some common ground, after all.

Not that that would do him any good. There was no way he could go to Holly now, after weeks of sneaking around behind her back, scraping proprietary data and using unnecessary compute to run unauthorized queries. The best he could do was hope that last night’s game had just been Riley getting back into the swing of things after being off the ice for a week. Tonight’s game would be better.

It had to be

It wasn’t.

The mood in the press box was grim as the clock ran out on the last ten seconds. They were down five-three. Riley had taken three shots on goal and missed all of them. Louis had watched his biometrics tank and tank, until he had to stop looking at them. He forced himself to focus on the other players, and tried not to think about what must be going through Riley’s head.

After the game, he and Holly packed up their equipment side by side in silence. Louis watched her run a command on her laptop to collate some notes for Riley’s physical therapy session tomorrow, and wanted to scream. He couldn’t believe she was still stubbornly clinging to that diagnosis.

She snapped her laptop closed and tucked it into the case, and as she zipped it shut, he steeled himself and said, “Are we absolutely sure there could be no other explanation for Webb’s issues?”

She sighed, getting up from her chair as she reached for her briefcase. “If this is about your analysis again, save it. I’m not in the mood.”

That set his teeth on edge. But this was coming down to the wire. If he didn’t say something, he might regret it. And at the end of the day, Holly was like him. She was just trying to do her job. She struggled with management. She probably had to deal with sexism and systemic unfairness. With being overlooked. With Gentlemen. If anyone could understand Riley’s situation, she could. She just needed to be convinced to see the data another way.

So he laid it all out for her. What he’d been doing with Riley, the data he’d skimmed, the behavior hacks. Everything. He showed her the shadow database he’d built for himself, the unauthorized queries he’d been running against it, what he thought they meant. She stood looking at the laptop over his shoulder, absorbing it all, her face completely unreadable, until finally she said, “You started all of this when?”

“Uh, California,” he said, clicking back to the beginning of his notes. “At the beginning of the West Coast tour.”

She pressed her lips into a hard line, and leaned in to read what he’d written. Then she pushed her glasses to the top of her head and looked at him. Very quietly, she said, “Louis, do you have any idea how much shit I would be in if management found out about this?”

Louis hesitated. “Uh…”

“This is a privacy breach, Louis.”

“Y—es, but–”

“You just put me on the hook for a massive chain of labor violations.”

Louis felt his stomach sinking.

“I mean, Jesus Christ, a shadow database? You have proprietary NHL data in a local directory on your personal laptop? The union will file a non-compliance agreement, the lawyers will be on you for everything you own–”

“Okay, I know it was risky, but just listen–”

“And now I’m on the fucking hook for it!” She stood, ripping the glasses from her head and shoving them into the neck of her sweatshirt. “I have kids, asshole. Do you understand? As head of your department, I am legally and contractually responsible for every byte of data ingested by this team.” She pinched her eyes closed, breathing out slowly. Then she looked at him. “And don’t think I don’t know exactly what’s going on between you and Webb.”

Louis jolted. “Excuse me?”

“I watched you sprint out of the press box the night of that fight. You two are involved, and I’m willing to bet that’s having a massive impact on your ability to discern between doing your job and taking unbelievably stupid risks. Because this, Louis” —she thrust her hand at the laptop— “is an unbelievably stupid risk. Have you even disclosed the relationship to HR? Because you’ll be on the hook for that too, if they find out.”

“It’s none of your business⁠—”

“Oh, grow up, Louis! This is a professional sports league, not a high school gym class.” She drew and released another long breath. “I should fire you for this, but luckily for you, I can’t, because I’d have to explain to management why my direct report is running rogue queries against a fucking shadow log on his personal fucking computer. And then they’d just fire me too.”