Head On: A Novel of the Near Future (Lock In #2)(11)

Barber turned to me. “I understand you caused a bit of a commotion at an investor meeting, Agent Shane.”

“I didn’t intend to,” I said. “I was just curious what happened to that data feed.”

“You’re aware that meeting was meant to be private and confidential,” Medina said.

Vann jumped in. “One of your own people led Shane into the meeting.”

“I wasn’t asked if I was an investor,” I said. “I was asked if I was in the skybox earlier. Which I was.”

“You know who Shane’s parents are,” Vann said. “You can’t imagine they wouldn’t talk to their own kid.”

“Nevertheless, I expect you to treat the information you learned as privileged,” Medina said.

“You can expect anything you want,” Vann said. She turned to Barber. “But this is now an FBI investigation. Speaking of which, maybe you can explain why you were trying to cover up the details of Duane Chapman’s death by pulling his data feed.”

“Of course we weren’t trying to cover up what happened to Duane Chapman,” Barber said. “We couldn’t have covered it up. We were simply protecting his privacy, and the privacy of his family.”

“His privacy,” Vann said.

“That’s right.” Barber nodded.

“Forty thousand people in the stands watched Chapman die, Ms. Barber.”

“Forty thousand people watched a threep being taken off the field,” Barber said. “It’s not the same thing.”

“You broadcast your players’ heart rate and brain activity to eighty thousand people a game for $29.95 a pop,” Vann replied, “or $39.95 for three games in a single day. If you could sell the data on when your players peed, you’d do it.”

Barber frowned. “I think you’re making light of a serious and tragic situation.”

I jumped in. “What Agent Vann is trying to say is that data privacy isn’t something the NAHL has been very concerned about before.”

“I don’t think that’s accurate.”

I shook my head at this. “I checked to see whether the NAHL had ever redacted a data feed of a player before. You’ve got eight years of Haden view data available and in all that time you’ve never pulled a data feed.”

“We’ve never had a player die on the field before this.”

“Is that the protocol?” Vann asked. “Someone dies, you pull the feed? Is that in the NAHL bylaws somewhere?”

“I would have to check,” Barber replied, flustered. “But my point is once it became clear that Duane was in trouble, it made sense to pull the feed.”

Vann squinted at Barber. “Why?”

Medina spoke up. “So his family wouldn’t have to learn he died from a goddamned data feed, Agent Vann. So that one of us could break the news to them, not a sportscaster or some random troll from the Agora.”

Vann looked over to Medina. “Uh-huh.”

“You don’t seem particularly sympathetic,” Medina said, to Vann. “Perhaps you would have preferred some troll tell his mother, or his sister.”

“If you were trying to avoid that, you could have just cut the feed from that point,” I said. “But you took down the whole feed. Everything from the moment the game started.”

“And?” Medina asked.

“You had a player die. You have a live feed of data relating to his physical status. Then you took it down. Who knows what you’ve been doing to it since.”

Medina smirked. “Because we would tamper with data that people already have.”

“No one’s data feed but yours is official,” I pointed out. “Not even your broadcast partners’ feeds.”

“And no one has any data from after the moment you pulled it,” Vann said.

“Duane’s death was an accident,” Barber said.

“Yes,” Vann said. “If only we had a verifiable data feed to help confirm that. But we don’t, so we can’t. Which is why we’re here, Ms. Barber. The minute the league pulled that feed, we had to assume something other than an accident.”

“If you’re suggesting that the league is in any way implicated in a wrongful death, we’ll be stopping this conversation now,” Medina said.

Vann turned to me. “Look, it’s a lawyer.”

“I actually knew that,” I said.

“Mr. Medina,” Vann said, turning back to the lawyer, “by all means, stop this conversation now. And when you do, I’ll do what I do, which is to get warrants for every single bit of data relating to Duane Chapman’s death, and also everything else I think is even vaguely related to his death, which will be many things. I will also tell the Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia Police Departments to warrant up as well, and between the three of us we’ll be very noisy about it. Which I’m sure is a thing that your league would love to have happen right now, while you’re trying to keep potential investors, who are already nervous about a dead player, from bailing and taking their money with them.”

Barber looked appalled. Medina, on the other hand, just looked annoyed. He got it.

“Or?” Medina asked, finally.

“Or, for starters, you can tell us why you actually pulled that data.”