Rush The Game

others aren’t. But if he stands by his own philosophy, why does he look like the world is sitting heavy on his shoulders, his muscles tense, his lips pressed to a thin line?
    Richelle’s picture dances to the left, nudging Luka’s down. She’s at the top.
    Then comes my picture. I feel like I’m looking at someone I’ve never met. The girl looks pale and pained and wild. There’s fear in her eyes, but the tilt of her chin and the set of her mouth say she’s not quite out of the game, yet. She is me, but not me. Topsy-turvy I go, and then I’m in rank above Jackson and below the others.
    Two columns of numbers pop up beside our images. The numbers beside Richelle’s name are red while everyone else’s are white. Red, like her con. Red, like her blood.
    “What are they?” I ask.
    “Scores,” Luka says. “The first column is our score from the last mission. The second column is cumulative for all the missions. The rank is according to the cumulative total.”
    I stare at the numbers. Richelle had the lowest score for the last mission, but the highest cumulative total. That’s why her name is first. “Richelle was kick-ass,” I whisper.
    “Yeah,” Tyrone says, his voice catching. “She was. And she almost made it out.”
    My pulse kicks up a notch because I think I understand, but I barely dare hope. “Her cumulative score was nine twenty-five. How much did she need to make it out?”
    “If she’d hit a thousand, she’d have been done.”
    “Done . . . you mean finished? Finished with the . . . game?”
    Jackson makes a sound of denial, but not because I’m way off base. It’s because, for some reason, this is something he wasn’t ready for me to know. I whirl toward him. “If she hit a thousand, she could have . . . what? Left? Retired? Escaped?”
    “All of the above,” Luka says.
    “It’s a rumor. You don’t know for certain,” Jackson says.
    “So just to be clear, the rumor is that a thousand points buys your freedom?” I wait for Jackson’s nod. “And we get points for killing”—I glance at Luka—“Sorry. I mean terminating aliens?” Again, Jackson nods.
    “How many?” I ask, and when no one answers, I ask louder, “How many points?”
    “Five for a sentinel. Ten for a specialist,” Luka says. “A leader’s fifteen. A commander is twenty.”
    So few points. It would take a very long time to get to a thousand. Maybe that’s the plan. Maybe whoever is running this bloody game wants to dangle the dream of freedom without ever delivering.
    I turn to Tyrone. “You told me this. In Vegas.” I struggle to recall what he said. “You talked about multi-hit points and bonus points for . . . stealth hits. And . . . penalty points.” I pause. “When I first woke up here, I heard you say something about the boy who was here before me. . . .”
    Tyrone’s expression darkens. “He was all about getting out. He didn’t care about the rest of us.”
    “He was a griefer,” Luka says.
    “Another gaming term?”
    He nods. “We use it for someone who causes grief. He stole hits. He’d let me or Tyrone or Richelle wear down the target, then dive in and steal the hit. Steal the points. He couldn’t care less if we got killed. He just wanted the points for himself. He wanted out.”
    “Doesn’t everyone want out?”
    “Yeah, but we won’t sacrifice our teammates to get there.”
    I cut a glance at Jackson. Every man for himself . The more I find out, the more I think he’s full of crap when he says that. From what I saw on the last mission, he’s no griefer. None of us are.
    I turn back to the scores. Richelle’s from the last mission is only twenty-five. But I remember the way she fought, and I’m certain it should have been higher than that.
    “Her score is so low last time because she died. She lost points.” I stare at Tyrone. “You said we have to pay for weapons. How else do we lose points?”
    “Twenty-five per injury.”
    I stare at Richelle’s score, wondering how many injuries—and how much pain—she suffered on that last mission to bring it so low. I feel sick.
    “If your con goes beyond yellow-orange, you lose even more,” Jackson says.
    “So I lost points last mission?”
    “Yes.”
    I look back at his weirdly low score. It’s doubly confusing because even though his score is the lowest, he’s the only one of us who has some sort of rank insignia or prestige badge next to his name. It’s bronze colored, in the shape of a