Rush The Game

these questions in the past, when he was first pulled, if he understood the answers any better than I do. He’s frozen in place, completely unmoving, not looking at me. Why won’t he look at me?
    I swallow and go back to my original question. “Why teenagers?”
    “Children are too young, too small, too weak. Adults have brains that exhibit fully formed neural connections. What you call getting pulled is far more difficult for them. Teenagers have valuable adult characteristics, but their brains are not yet fully wired in a set pattern. Adolescence is a time of profound growth and change for the human brain. The prefrontal cortex does not reach maturity until the middle of the third decade of human life.”
    “You’re saying that a teenager’s brain is better than an adult’s? Don’t hear that often.”
    “For the task at hand, yes. The adult response to a specific stimulus is generally more intellectual, more of a learned response. The teenager’s is more instinctual, and that is your strength.”
    I turn to Jackson. He’s watching me, his expression taut and edgy. “On the last mission, you told me to close my eyes right before the flash, but I already knew to do that. You told me to get down, but I was already dropping. I have the same instincts you do.”
    He nods, and I wonder why he doesn’t look happy about it.
    “But Luka and Tyrone? They don’t have those same instincts?”
    I’m asking Jackson, not the Committee. For some reason, I feel like it’s essential to hear the answers from him.
    “No,” he says softly. His answer is enormously important. I’ve figured out that much, but I haven’t figured out why .
    “Jackson . . .” I want to tell him that whatever it is, I’ll forgive him. But I can’t make myself say that. The last person I promised to forgive was Mom, and I lied. If there’s anything that I’ve figured out since the first time I got pulled, it’s that I’m still angry at her for dying, for leaving me. I haven’t forgiven her, and that makes the last thing I ever said to her a lie. I’m not going to lie to Jackson, too.
    His lips draw tight at the corners. His eyes swirl, mercury gray. “Ask your questions,” he orders. “You might never get this chance again. The Committee isn’t always this amenable.”
    I whirl back to face the three figures on the shelf, silent and patient because they aren’t really here. They’re the remnants of long-dead ancestors stored in some sort of database. Even though there’s only one voice, it isn’t only one of them talking in my head. It’s a combination of all their thoughts and ideas poured into that one voice.
    “Why a game? A deadly game?” I ask, buried emotions bubbling to the surface. I feel cold, then hot, the burn of anger singeing me. “We die out there. We don’t all come back. What’s with the scores and the points? A game trivializes the loss of life.” It trivializes Richelle and any others who gave up their lives fighting to keep humanity safe.
    “We meant no disrespect. We needed something accessible, something those your age could understand. We frame the battle in terms of a game to help those who are pulled acclimate and quickly come to terms with expectations.”
    “But there’s no training. No buildup. You just throw us out there to die!”
    “Not to die. To fight. The more you play, the more adept you become. And you were born knowing how to battle the Drau, part of our legacy to you. It is only a question of you accessing the information.”
    I think of Richelle, a bubbly cheerleader who was badass, taking top place in all the scores. I think of myself, figuring everything out when I had to, even though guidance was limited. But I’m not convinced.
    “You could still train us, do something to offer explanation, have some sort of proper chain of command.”
    “Because humans do it that way? Does that make it the only way? The best way?”
    I don’t know what to say to that. It just seems the commonsense way to me. Train new recruits. Offer information. . . .
    Then I remember that Jackson and the others did exactly that when I was first pulled. They told me things. I didn’t believe them. Not until I saw it for myself.
    As if aware of the turn of my thoughts, the Committee says, “There is no time to convince every human who is pulled, to argue and cajole. Better to show. The Drau have sent reconnaissance teams, the teams you face in the game. We have a few short years at most