Chaos Theorem

Chapter 3: Planet Funpark

At the point where the theme park started to merge with the strange city, we set our sights for the next place for us to find clues. Yes, us. The fact that that dark boy Nate had chosen to stick with me was pleasantly surprising, and I couldn't help the little smiles that crept onto my face when he spoke to me about anything.
  Nate said that whilst on the ferris wheel he saw a mall, which was strangely boxy in shape, and was stuck in the middle of what appeared to be carnival stalls, but Nate couldn't tell from such a great distance. It was actually pretty close, but I still needed to know one thing;
  "How do you know it's a shopping mall?" I asked him as we walked along, trying not to shout at any of the annoying teenagers barging past us in the increasingly narrowing streets.
  "It's a guess. But it was plastered with adverts, so it's my best bet. They were all in English, but were for brands I've never heard of before." Nate shrugged, his bright eyes darting about rapidly as if he were piecing together a long equation in his mind, "So I guess my multiverse theory still stands."
  That settled it, then. We weren't 100% sure, but our phones were doing enough 100%-ing for the time being, so that wasn't a problem. Plus, I had every reason to trust him. I knew people who'd tell me that that was a bad idea, but a little bit of friendship never hurt anyone.
  "Anyways," Nate continued when I didn't respond, "Do you listen to other Taylor Swift songs, or do you just listen to Wildest Dreams on loop?"
  "I don't just listen to Taylor Swift!" I chortled, thinking of all of the other genres that fought for the spotlight in my playlist.
  "So you aren't an avid Swiftie?" Nate frowned, seemingly suprised.
  "No, not really."
  Nate laughed teasingly, "Ah. Because I have a friend who is an avid Swiftie, and he listens to that song on repeat. Drives his boyfriend crazy, he just thinks all pop is cheesy and sounds the same."
  I stopped with a stamp of my foot, "WHAT?! That's insane! You can't compare artists like Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo! Katy Perry and Billie Eilish! Ed Sheeran and Demi Lovato! My guy is totally messed up!"
  Nate sneered, "Spoken like a true Swiftie."
  I rolled my eyes and continued walking, but slower, lost in thought, "I hate you, Nathaniel Grimsby."
  "Sick. But also, you don't."
  "That's up to interpretation." I replied vaguely, smiling at my own sagaciousness, "But I mostly listen to punk pop."
  "Reputation is punk pop." Nate noted.
  I glared at him, "I've just met you. You're really tempting fate by bugging me like this."
  "Like poking a sleeping bear." Nate grinned teasingly, "Or a cat, I guess. Hopefully she won't wake up and scratch me."
  "Don't use my name in wordplay. Only I get to do that."
  The tents which were expected of a carnival like the one Nate described to me started to pop up along the uneven, peach coloured cobblestone. They were magenta, and cyan, and a deep yellow. A triad of inviting colours. A part of me wanted to win a plushie, but when I saw the giant bear plushies I remembered that I was in the middle of a conversation, and that I could win one in a minute.
  "I stand by what I said before." Nate grinned, "You are very dramatic. And also edgy, apparently."
  I stared at him tiredly, "I hope that your Swiftie friend and his anti-Swiftie boyfriend both slap you."
  "Edgy indeed." he anunciated.
  To be fair, he wasn't wrong, at least at the moment. Something about Nate was making me talk different to how I normally did, like how a teenager confronts their bullies in their dreams, where it doesn't quite make sense as an actual confrontation. Like a friendly conversation, but... more aggressive? Was that the right term?
  Well, I knew that I needed to revert back. I'd been warned far too many times not to change for other people to let this happen.
  I started my revertification with, "Hey Nate, what do you listen-?"
  "Oh look, we're here." Nate interrupted, and surely enough we turned the corner around the carnival stalls and there it was.
  I didn't know what I was expecting. I had this feeling that it'd just be placed there, being flashy compared to the stalls surrounding it, being the bane of all of the stalls' owners. But actually, when I walked out and saw the circular plaza with the mall at one end and the stalls clearing to a path with even more at the other, I was surprised by how the mall complemented the stalls rather than the other way around.
  Not just that, but the mall looked like nobody had bothered to walk into it in quite a while. So much so, that they had closed their doors and put the shops inside out of business. The adverts on the side were crusty, and were slowly turning an undesirable shade of green which made my stomach churn slightly. The stairs leading up to the platform in front of the front doors looked as if they might have been black in a day gone by, but were now a depressing, decrepit grey. The doors themselves were glass, but the edges were so rusted that if anyone managed to open them it'd be a miracle. However, the door was covered by a glass shelter, which might be a nice way to keep out the rain, not that I'd seen any yet.
  I slithered amongst the writhing sea of bodies towards the doors, and Nate barged through as well until the glass cover shielded us and I was able to try the door. It turned out the rust wasn't the problem - the door moved, but a chain on the other side had locked it. Not that we could see very far - the doors were blackened, as if they had been stained with smoke.
  "It's locked, I think." I sighed, letting my hand slip and taking a step back.
  Nate moved forwards and shoved into the door, "Here, let me try." Nate pitied my weakness, before he added, "Did you notice that none of the stalls have any staff? I don't know where they've all gone, but people are still playing the games."
  Wow. There really was nobody working the stalls. I could literally see people stealing the plushies, and I wondered why the owners of the theme park would let this happen. There had to be something that wasn't obvious on the surface...
  Something which chilled me.
  It caused me to check the mingames app again... and the persistent words 'the game has not started yet' still lingered. They mocked me. A part of me wished that they would change, but another part felt like this was a grace period... like something was due to go very wrong.
  And I watched the grace period end, as the words converted into a spinning circle. Loading. But loading what? I held my phone tighter and moved it closer to my face, the white screen etching its way into my brain. It felt like the answers to all of my problems were in my hands, and yet also just out of reach.
  "Damn." I whispered to myself, letting my phone, along with my arm, flop to my side.
  And that was it.
  That was the moment when everything changed forever.
  And the herald of this great change was the single, yet hauntingly bitter, word, "OW!"
  I didn't know who had said it at first, and Nate clearly hadn't heard it at all because his sights were still on the door. But I had forgotten about the door now. I had to know who or what had made that painful sound.
  The pool of bodies froze in a certain area, and I saw a man there, in a tank top. He was incredibly pale...
  It made the large, scarlet burn mark on his arm even more obvious.
  "Nate." I breathed, as the man started to howl in pain at the burn. It was definitely a chemical burn. I could tell because the acid still dropped down his arm, spreading the wound further...
  "Just a minute." Nate murmered, slamming into the door again.
  Droplets started to fall from the sky. More people made that gut-wrenching shriek as it hit their arms. Their legs. Their heads. My breathing quickened and my vision became clouded up by tears.
  "Nate." I panted, and I was acutely aware of how quiet my voice was.
  "In a minute! Jesus." Nate scoffed, still not turning. How could he not hear? What was wrong with him?
  My chest began to heave and the tears bled from my eyes, and I couldn't close my mouth but I forced my legs to send me backwards. I shook my head.
  "Nate!" I sobbed, "Nate, something's wrong!"
  Nate scowled at me, "Chill out, just wait a seco- what... the..."
  He had seen it, and now there was no turning back. The droplets drilled into the skin of people like bullets, and I shook my head in disbelief. This was a nightmare. These rides were fake. These stalls were fake. Nate was fake. I'd wake up in a minute.
  "SHIT, IT'S ACID RAIN!" Nate yelled, "Kat, we need to go!"
  I made a tiny, feeble noise against the screaming blasting around me.
  Something creaked above me, and I made that sound again. I looked up in a flash, and I saw that the glass cover was beginning to fold under the brute force of the acid rain.
  "Nate..." I croaked again.
  Nate looked up too, knowing that watching my gaze was important now, and replied, "No!"
  He threw his body at the door again. And again. Nothing changed. But then I threw myself too, and we both were sure that the door was going to break down.
  We were deluded.
  I think...
  I think that when the first person dropped dead... that was when I sprang into action. The tears in my own eyes shook me, but what shook me more was the sizzling skin. The glassy eyes. The soulless mound of cells. I couldn't let that be me. And more importantly, I couldn't let that be Nate.
  "Nate, we aren't safe here! We need to go, there has to be more cover somewhere!" I shouted, but I knew that I needed to work harder. Just saying things wouldn't get them done.
  "I know I can get this door open!" Nate cried out, grumbling in pain as the door continued to move, but not move enough to let us in.
  "Forget about the door!" I wailed, "The mall isn't going to save us! In fact, if the cover falls off the wall it'll FRICKING KILL US!" and when he didn't stop, I pulled him away, "STOP, NATE!"
  Nate trembled and ran his hand through his hair, "There might be a side door."
  "That's a risk; we can't prove it's there, and then we'll die!" I thought, looking for something in the distance that would definitely work as cover, before I added, realising, "And I have short sleeves. I don't know how long I'll last."
  "Don't think like that."
  I swallowed and looked up as the glass ceiling continued to droop towards us. Soon, we'd both be dead meat.
  Nate sighed, "Here."
  He removed his right arm from his jacket, and stretched the jacket towards me. I put my arm in the sleeve, and tried to distract myself from the fact that it was really uncomfortable.
  "Th- thank you." I smiled weakly, and another set of tears dropped from my eyes unwillingly, being expelled by the hope I was given by just the simple, kind act.
  "Thank me later, this thing's gonna fall!" Nate gulped, "Like, right now!"
  Not needing to hear it twice, I grabbed his arm, and flew from the stairs in front of the mall's door, and we both landed in the middle of hell. But at least when the covering fell we didn't end up as pancakes. It was loud, and it made me jump.
  But I couldn't freeze up.
  We had to run!
  We akwardly ran, the two of us linked in one. I tried not to trip over the uneven stones. I couldn't be the reason for both of us to die.
  Some of the rain hit my shoe.
  Smoke came up from it, and clouded my vision, causing me to tear up again and start coughing.
  I tripped, but Nate caught me.
  People slammed into me and more and more fell.
  I thought I was going to faint...
  "LOOK, THERE'S A SIDE DOOR!" Nate laughed happily, our luck exceeding our highest expectations.
  And then we ran in, without any further incident.
  I couldn't believe it, we were so lucky! I felt like I could relax... but I didn't. Something was still bugging me, and I was sure that it was because there were still people dying around me, and there was nothing that we could do to stop it.
  Each silenced puddle of flesh and blood tugged at my heart...
  Was this what survivor's guilt felt like?
  I was too sorry to speak.
  I was too sorry to move.
  I was too sorry to...
  No, enough of that.
  "HEY!" I screamed desperately, "GET IN HERE! IT'S SAFE!"
  Nate licked his dry lips and yelled after me, "THERE'S A SIDE DOOR!"
  But our attempts were futile. Were they too far away? A part of me wanted to step back out into the crowd and pull people in, but Nate's jacket had sustained enough damage, and he might've needed it later.
  "PLEASE!" I bawled again, tears streaming from my eyes and making little splats on the floor, "PLEASE, WE CAN... we can he- help you!"
  Nobody was listening... nobody could hear. No. It couldn't end like that! There was no way!
  "We need to shut the door, Kat." Nate grieved wistfully, fighting to keep back his own tears. One of us had to be strong, and it wasn't going to be me.
  "NO! We can still help them!" I shook my head in denial, because it was denial. I was lying to myself.
  "Please. The rain'll flood in, and then it could get to us too." Nate shook his head.
  I stood there for a moment, in silence. The screams told me to wait, but wait for what? They weren't listening to me, and their fate was as good as sealed. Whether I admitted it to myself to myself or not, it was indeed over. It was going to end like this.
  I looked at Nate, but couldn't bring myself to say anything, because then it'd all be real. Then I'd have said the word to kill even more of those people. And it'd feel even more like it was my fault.
  I just wished that there was something I could do, anything.
  "WAIT!"
  I heard her, but I didn't see her. Nate didn't appear to have heard her anyway, which was bad because he was still closing the heavy, metal door. The way he pulled it told me that we might not be able to open it again if it shut.
  "Nate, stop! Someone's on their way!" I grabbed his arm roughly.
  Chaos ensued around the girl as she emerged from the bloody corpses with two more people still lost in the crowds. She waved at me, and her glasses reflected into my eyes. My heart fluttered, knowing that I had a chance to do the something I so desired to do.
  The girl pushed past people who absent-mindedly blocked her way, and she and her two companions bumped into Nate as they rested their burnt legs in the safety of the room. They all doubled over and panted, and now satisfied that we'd done what we could, I took the door and yanked it shut, without even waiting for Nate's input.
  The five of us stood there, our breathing ragged, and the images of the sizzling corpses making bile rise in the back of my throat. I doubled over, thinking that I was going to be sick, but I stopped myself. Nobody needed to see me like that.
  The girl, who had the most shattered and high pitched sounding breath, was shorter than everyone else in the room. Her hair was cut into short bangs, and it was dyed a cyan colour seen in space patterns and aesthetics, but it looked like it hadn't been redyed in a while because the black underneath was starting to show through. When she stood up fully, she straightened her gold-rimmed glasses in front of her ocean eyes, and moved them so that they sat sturdily on her small, lightly freckled nose.
  She wore a dark grey, unbuttoned cardigan atop a white shirt with a little green alien on it. Her blue jean shorts looked like they had suffered from a lot of strenuous activity as they were covered in a couple places by dried dirt. Leggings, which tinted the girl's legs slightly black, sat beneath the denim shorts, and black socks hugged the bottom of those, before ending in supernova blue trainers. The whole outfit seemed to combine sci-fi vibes with emo aesthetic, which was an odd but unique combination, assumedly just like the girl.
  The only boy she was with didn't look like any boy I'd ever talked to. I mean, it was nice to see kids engaging in their history, but a plague doctor's mask? Seriously? Wasn't it, like, really hot here? The black mask had bone-white eyes, and the mask hid beneath a shady beanie. I couldn't see a single strand of hair on the boy's head as it was all covered, as was his face.
  He wore a black turtleneck too, and matching black trousers, with many pockets which I doubted got used all the time. The trousers were tucked into black boots as well. The boy's stance was reserved and nervous; he clearly was very introverted, and the acid rain had left a toll on him. I heard his silent cries, and I saw his hidden pain.
  The last girl was probably what Nate meant when he said 'animal people'. The anthropomorphic lynx looked slightly reserved like the boy, but not quite. Her warm yellow fur was short and surrounded wide, brown eyes and perky, chestnut ears, with little tufts at the peaks.
  The girl wore an oversized hoodie with tie dye on it in a cool cyan, a faded lilac and a juxtaposingly vibrant magenta at the bottom, in layers like a cake. Her cycling shorts were grey and looked brand new, and she was wearing black boots which also looked new, if not slightly scuffed from all of the running. I looked to see if she still seemed nervous, and there was a moment where we locked eyes, and the lynx's eyes widened and her tail twitched before we both looked to the floor awkwardly.
  I could just put it up to stress from the rain... because, to be fair, I was very, very stressed.
  "Th- thank you. Thank you so much! How can I ever repay you?" the girl with the dyed hair panted with relief. She suprised me when she spoke with an American accent.
  "You don't need to," I assured her, "It was the right thing to do."
  The girl laughed bleakly and restraightened her glasses, "There aren't enough nice people in the world like you anymore."
  We all stood there panting for a few more minutes. I wiped some sweat from my forehead, and looked around the room, hoping that we hadn't just locked ourselves in a room with no escape. Thankfully, we hadn't, but the room was still unfriendly and uninviting. It was bland and grey, the colour seen on corpses that had started to fester in their graves. There were some shelves, but they were empty, and at the end of the room were stairs; one set leading up towards an unknown area and one leading down towards an inky black sea of shadow.
  I then realised that I hadn't introduced myself to the American girl or to the reserved pair behind her, "I'm Kat, by the way." was the solution.
  The American girl smiled, "I'm-"
  But she was interrupted by the sound of four phones vibrating and ringing very loudly. I fumbled to get mine out of my pocket, and Nate got his out too soon after. The lynx girl and the American girl got theirs out too, but the plague doctor boy leaned over the American girl's phone to see her screen, seemingly not having his own phone.
  My phone had automatically booted up the minigames app, and the loading circle had been replaced by a white screen with black text on it. The words started to be read out by the phones.
  "Welcome to Chaos Theorem, and welcome to Planet Funpark!" sang the posh, male voice on the other end, "Thank you for playing that first game, we hope you enjoyed it."
  "Game..?" the lynx girl thought, her light country British accent blending with a Northern British one as well.
  "This is just like Alice in Borderland!" the American girl gasped, "I love that show!"
  The man at the other end of the phone interrupted, "Each of you have been allocated five points."
  Red text flashed up, saying '+5' before fading away.
  But what did this all mean? All of my previous questions had been solved; this was certainly a death trap. But how had 'Planet Funpark', or whatever this place was called, been equipped with perfectly timed acid rain? Someone, or something, had made this happen. And that person also had to know what 'Chaos Theorem' was. The voice had said it like it was something we all should have known, but I had no clue what it could be. Neither did anyone else.
  Our silence was deafening. Nothing would be able to distract us from the fact that we were all drop-dead terrified.
  "Game." the phones started again, and the text was replaced and was read out again, "Attribute: Strength and Agility. Objective: escape the acid rising from the basement and reach the mall's roof."
  Silence, again. This had to be a joke. It had to be.
  "Penny, what does that mean?" the lynx girl asked, barely audible.
  The American girl, presumably Penny, answered, "I... I don't know."
  Silence.
  I waited for something to happen. Something to explode. The door to burst open and rain to flood in, but nothing.
  "Kat." Nate tapped my arm.
  He didn't need to tell me twice. We could all see the acid rising from the lower stairs, emerging from the inky blackness like a monster escaping its cage. And the predator had its sights set on our flesh.
  I breathed heavily, before I yelled, "RUN!"

To be continued...