SOLVED. Children's/YA about genetically modified children in the future who play war games so their countries don't have actual wars. The boy had very special, delicate hands for moving the model soldiers on the playing field. [s]

[Amy N.]

I'm pretty certain this was a Scholastic book. The main character is a young teenage boy who lives in a facility. He has hands that are very deft and he uses them to move tiny 3D models around on a playing field. Eventually he finds out that he is being prepared to fight a play war by moving the models around, which is how the future avoids actual war with human casualties. He meets a girl who is more rebellious and curious than he is, and she takes him outside their section of the underground facility they live in and they do other things against the rules. She is also on his three-person team, I forget what her job was. She was something of a love interest I think.

The third person on the team is a little boy who is very deformed with a small crippled body and misshapen large head, but he's very intelligent and he's the strategist. They produced a lot of mentally and physically underdeveloped babies during the genetic experiments to produce these three kids, but the discarded babies were treated well. The intelligent kid was originally put in with the rejects and he was happy there until they figured out how intelligent he was. The three of them have to fight other teams representing other countries, and (view spoiler)[I think they do end up winning the war, but then they are a little bereft and don't know what to do with their lives. (hide spoiler)]

There was a flashback scene early on where the boy remembers when a section of ceiling tile fell and cut his hands, and the doctors were all extremely concerned and checked his hands for possible infection about twenty times a day. They moved him to another part of the facility with reinforced ceilings that could never possibly fall, because if his hands got infected or damaged he couldn't do his job in the war games.

I probably read this somewhere around fifteen or twenty years ago.

[Rebecca]

I'm pretty sure this is The Virtual War series.
Virtual War

[Amy N.]

Rebecca wrote: "I'm pretty sure this is The Virtual War series.
Virtual War"

Not only is this definitely it, but in the recommended books for this one was another title I have been trying to remember and was going to make a post for! Thank you so much!