Chapter 4: Phantom Protocol

The official story was that Aleksei Kolosov had finally agreed to report to Lehigh Valley for a conditioning stint—three games, light travel, get the legs under him, build “organizational trust.” That’s what the Flyers PR team told the media. But Aleksei knew the truth: he was going behind enemy lines.

Lehigh Valley wasn't a developmental team. Not anymore. It was a front. Buried somewhere in the rusting infrastructure of the PPL Center was an off-book server used by a black market ring to traffic biometric player data—reaction times, stress responses, cortisol levels during shootouts—and sell it to the highest bidder: rival teams, gamblers, even Canadian AI firms developing predictive puck tracking.

Kolosov was sent to destroy it. But he couldn’t do it alone.

That’s when he appeared.

John Tortorella.

He called the meeting “private.” It happened in a dark equipment room behind Wells Fargo Center’s Zamboni bay. Torts stood there in silence for a long moment, arms crossed, jaw tight.

“You’re not gonna like this,” he said. “I’m getting fired.”

Kolosov stared.

Torts leaned in. “That’s the cover. They need to believe I’m washed. Burned out. Lost the room. Meanwhile—”

He flicked open a lanyard. Inside was an ID badge for a deep-state program Kolosov had only heard rumors about: CodeName: BARNFIGHT—a shadow cyberdivision operated under the Department of Player Safety. Torts wasn’t just a bench boss with anger management issues. He was a deep-cover cyberoperative trained in firewall breaching, facial recognition spoofing, and JavaScript so outdated it actually couldn’t be traced.

“I’ll be your eyes,” Torts growled. “And your keyboard.”

So Kolosov played the role. Reported to the Phantoms. Participated in drills. Ate team breakfast. Even let the goalie coach tweak his stance (though in reality, Kolosov was running neurofeedback loops through his mask and secretly scanning players for signs of double agents). He was particularly suspicious of a strength coach named “Derek,” who claimed to be from Saskatoon but pronounced it “Sasquatoon” and had suspiciously smooth hands for someone who “dragged sleds for a living.”

Tortorella, meanwhile, was “fired” with flair. His last press conference ended in an uncharacteristic hug with a Flyers beat writer and a cryptic farewell: “Sometimes the dog has to bite the leash.” Within hours, he was relocated to a safe house disguised as a Flyers alumni charity office in Allentown. From there, he provided live terminal access to Kolosov through an Apple Watch modified with Soviet firmware.

The plan was simple: use Kolosov’s goalie drills to access the Phantoms’ mainframe. The biometric data was routed through a hidden hub behind the leg press machine in the team gym. During a pre-practice stretch, Kolosov faked a groin strain and rolled into the locker room, sliding behind the weights, jacking in with a cable disguised as a skate lace. Torts was online in seconds.

“I’m in,” Torts said. “God, I’ve missed this.”

The hack was working. They were minutes away from downloading the entire data cache. But then—

Alarm.

The fake strength coach had vanished. A backdoor triggered. Kolosov looked up to see the assistant GM of a rival team—face painted like a fan, but eyes too sharp, too aware—standing just outside the gym window.

The op had been compromised.

“Abort?” Torts asked.

“No,” Kolosov replied. “We finish.”

He dove back onto the ice mid-drill, pretended to stumble during a puck-tracking exercise, and launched his blocker across the rink—striking the Wi-Fi repeater, severing the signal. The data couldn’t be rerouted. The system fried. Mission complete.

Later that night, in a diner outside Allentown, Kolosov met with Tortorella, who was wearing a Reading Royals hoodie and sunglasses.

“You did good,” Torts muttered, not making eye contact. “You’re out now. They’ll assign someone else to clean up.”

Kolosov nodded. “And you?”

“I’ve got one last job,” Torts said, pushing a manila envelope across the table. “The mole on the Board of Governors. You’ll need to play in the Stadium Series to get close.”

Kolosov’s eyes narrowed.

He hated the idea of playing for the Flyers.

But he hated injustice more.

Prompt: Chapter 4, please. Work in that Tortorella met with him to say he was going to get fired from the team so he could be Kolosov's secret contact who would do most of the computer hacking Kolosov needed.