I couldn't breathe.
That face—my face—inside the rocket, smiling through the helmet visor like this was just another Tuesday. The video feed glitched, but it was unmistakably me.
Ariel backed away from the screen slowly, like it might bite her. "That's not you, right? Please tell me that's not you."
"I don't think I've ever smiled like that in my life," I whispered.
Theo stared at the monitor. "Then what the hell is it?"
The rocket on screen broke through the clouds, ascending with terrifying precision. The feed zoomed in to show the control panel inside the cockpit. Every motion from… me… was practiced, smooth.
"Wait," Ariel murmured. "Look at the patch on the suit."
We all leaned in.
It wasn't our patch.
It was the Echo Project's symbol: a red X slashed through a white rocket.
"I think," Theo said slowly, "that's not a clone. That's an echo."
---
I blinked. "A what?"
"A digital construct," Theo said. "Some kind of synthetic replica—designed from your neural patterns. Probably built from the data we submitted to that scholarship program."
"You mean the one we never got a reply to?"
"Yeah. We did. Just not in the way we expected."
Ariel was pacing again. "Okay, okay, let's say you're right. There's a copy of you flying our rocket to the moon under the command of a defunct government program. What do we do about it?"
"We get to the backup rocket," Theo said.
I turned to him. "We have a backup rocket?"
He grinned. "Sort of."
---
The "backup rocket" was a semi-assembled prototype buried in a hangar under the junkyard behind Theo's cousin's gas station.
We stole a golf cart.
The drive was chaos—mud, broken fences, and at least one startled cow—but we made it in thirty minutes. Theo hotwired the hangar door, and we were in.
The backup rocket was half the size of the original, still missing half a wing and sporting a handwritten label that said "DO NOT PRESS RED BUTTON."
"So," Ariel said, hands on her hips. "This is your brilliant plan?"
Theo handed her a helmet. "It's either this, or wait for your evil twin to terraform the moon."
"Fair."
---
We split up to prep the launch.
Ariel worked on the navigation. I rewired the comms. Theo started the countdown.
Then the lights dimmed.
Again.
A low hum echoed through the hangar.
From the corner, something moved.
We turned. A humanoid figure stepped into view, cloaked in shadows. Another me.
Except this time, it wasn't wearing a helmet.
Its eyes glowed faintly blue.
I stepped forward.
"Who are you?" I asked.
It smiled. "I'm the version of you that never hesitated."
A pause.
Then it said: "And I'm here to stop you."
---
The countdown timer on the rocket hit 90 seconds.
Ariel shouted, "Whatever you're doing, do it faster!"
I stared at my Echo. It tilted its head.
"We both want the moon," it said.
"Then why not work together?"
The echo stepped closer. "Because only one of us belongs there."
---
Suddenly, the room shook. Theo had activated the pre-launch thrusters.
The echo lunged at me.
I ducked, grabbed a wrench, and swung.
It vanished.
Not blinked—just… evaporated into static.
A hologram?
Ariel grabbed my wrist. "GET IN!"
We bolted into the rocket just as the launch doors opened above.
Theo hit the ignition.
The world roared.
And we left Earth behind—again.
Except this time…
We were chasing ourselves.