The silence between us was louder than any explosion we'd ever caused with our rocket engines.
Ariel paced back and forth inside the cramped rocket lab, her brows furrowed, muttering to herself in a mixture of frustration and paranoia. "I swear it wasn't like this yesterday," she hissed, holding up a circuit board that looked perfectly normal to me—except for the ominous scorch mark shaped like a smiley face.
Theo sat cross-legged on the floor, notebook in hand, scribbling formulas furiously. "That's not just faulty wiring," he said, not looking up. "Someone is sabotaging the rocket. But they're good. They know our schedule."
My spine tingled.
"Who would even do that?!" I asked, glancing between them. "We're barely functioning humans—no offense—and we haven't even passed the nozzle stability test!"
Theo's pencil snapped in his hand. "Exactly," he said. "Which means they want us to fail *before* we get close."
Ariel slammed the board onto the desk. "We need to run a full diagnostic—thermal, pressure, even quantum if we have to."
I raised a brow. "Quantum?"
She pointed at Theo's bagel, which had been inexplicably hollowed out from the inside. "That's not a normal breakfast crime."
And that's when the lights flickered.
We all froze.
"Okay," I whispered. "Now it's officially creepy."
The computer monitors flashed with static, and suddenly a message blinked across the screen in green text:
**"Stop digging or you won't see the stars."**
My mouth went dry.
Theo bolted up. "Who's accessing our terminal?!"
Ariel was already typing furiously, running a trace. "They're bouncing off three satellites. This is professional-level stuff."
"Like… spy professional?" I gulped.
"Or government," Theo added darkly. "Or worse—ex-boyfriend with too much time and a grudge."
Ariel paused, blinked at the screen, then gasped.
"What?" I asked, leaning in.
She turned the monitor to us. A tiny emblem had appeared in the bottom corner—a rocket crossed out with a red line.
"That's the symbol from that abandoned aerospace project—Lunar Project Echo," she whispered. "It was shut down a year ago. Completely classified. No survivors."
I blinked. "Wait. *No survivors*?!"
Theo rubbed his temples. "This is a conspiracy. A real one. Not just the 'school cafeteria is selling expired pudding' type."
There was a beat of silence as we all tried to process.
Then, a loud knock echoed on the lab door.
Three knocks.
Then silence.
We looked at each other.
"I'm not opening that," Ariel said immediately.
"Me neither," I said, backing away.
Theo, of course, approached the door with a wrench in hand like he was about to star in a horror film.
"Wait," I whispered. "We need a plan."
Theo looked back at us and grinned. "We do have a plan."
"Oh yeah?" I asked.
He pointed at the emergency escape tunnel hatch under the floor. "Run now. Think later."
And so we did.
Down the tunnel, through the mud, out into the night under the stars we once dreamed of flying to. Except now, we weren't just chasing a dream.
We were running from something—or *someone*—who wanted to bury it.
And we had no idea why.
But one thing was certain:
The mission had just changed.