Page 153 of Over the Line

“Nah, man,” he growled. “Like I said—I’ve never been there, and I haven’t had shit done to my knee! And that’s not even my car, for fuck’s sake?”

“Can I see it?” Chris asked. The phone was passed to him, and he was quiet as he watched the video. Then he paused it and rewound a bit. Pulling the phone closer to his face, he said, “This is AI.”

“Of course it is,” Temo muttered. “How else do they have me⁠—”

“There’s that, but I mean, it’s also pretty obvious.” Chris turned the phone so we could both see it, and he pointed at a sign in the background. “Look at the words.”

We both leaned in. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the words on the sign were garbled. Not like they were out of focus, but like complete gibberish.

Temo muttered something in his native tongue, followed by, “Of course it’s from Jack fucking Arlen.” He damn near threw the phone. “Why am I not fucking surprised?”

Rage boiled up in me. “It was Jack? Are you sure?”

“His name is on the byline,” Chris said.

“For fuck’s sake.” I never liked having him in the locker room, but it always irritated me even more on Pride Night. He’d run numerous stories about players in the League who disliked Pride events and didn’t want to participate. Every time, he’d insist he was just giving players a voice, but somehow, it was always the naysayers who got amplified. Ditto with the events we did for Black History Month, Jewish Heritage Night, and Indigenous People’s Day. Somehow he always made space for the people who thought events like that “weren’t a necessary part of hockey” or “were a distraction.”

I was genuinely surprised Temo hadn’t dropped gloves with him by now. As one of the few indigenous players in the League, Temo was unsurprisingly featured in a couple of articles and a video for Indigenous People’s Day. The team had also done something for Hispanic Heritage Month around the same time, and Temo—being both Mexican and Nahuatl—had been featured there as well. Jack had “jokingly” suggested in a blog post that Temo was “double-dipping” on the “special nights.”

He’d done the same when Tyler Robbins had been mentioned in both Black History and Pride Night events. I still wondered if that blog post had been Ty’s last straw; he’d left Pittsburgh during free agency, taking a huge pay cut to play for Edmonton.

And now Jack was posting AI-generated fakes. Right now it was something relatively benign—Temo had broken his scoring drought and a surgery that could’ve easily happened during the off season was hardly a scandal. Still not great, still something that could get the rumor mill churning about Temo and the Phantoms lying about his injury status, but it could’ve been a lot worse.

Which was exactly what concerned me—how much worse it could get if shit like this went unchecked.

And… fuck. Maybe it was just as well Garrett and I weren’t public right now. Just what we needed—AI fake videos about us. I wanted to believe people wouldn’t care enough to put in that kind of effort, but someone had cared enough to fake one of Temo hobbling out of an orthopedic surgery clinic just to start shit about his recent slump.

I shuddered.

Of course, right then, my favorite person in the known universe came strolling in.

“Hey. Arlen.” Temo gestured sharply for the dickhead to come over. “You know anything about this?”

Jack actually looked surprised, which made sense; I didn’t imagine even he expected one of us to actually want to talk to him. He strolled over, though, smarmy smile firmly in place. “Know anything about what?”

Craws showed him the video.

Jack shrugged and handed back the phone. “Oh yeah, someone sent that to me. They were confused because the club keeps insisting Temo’s knee is good.”

“Except it’s fake,” Temo snapped. “My knee is good.”

Another shrug from the insufferable douche. “I just report on what’s sent to me.”

“And do you do anything to verify what’s sent to you?” I demanded. “Like, isn’t that your job? Especially when you know people post fakes all over the place now?”

“Sure, I try to, but they’re hard to tell from reality.” His third shrug was even more flippant. “I just put them out there—people can decide what’s real or fake.”

“If you put it out there,” I growled, “they’re going to assume you already did the legwork to figure out if it’s fake. You’re giving it credibility.”

“Hey, I’m just⁠—”

“All right, boys,” Coach called out. “Let’s go!”

Fuck. Warmups.

I stabbed a finger at Jack. “This isn’t over.”

He just smiled like the bastard he was.