The Circle

machine going about its work, the shark circled andstabbed until he had devoured the thousand babies, and the seaweed, and the coral,
     and the anemones. It ate everything, and deposited the remains quickly, carpeting
     the empty aquarium in a low film of white ash.
    “Well,” Ty said, “that was about what I imagined would happen.” He seemed unshaken,
     even buoyant as he shook Stenton’s hand, and then Bailey’s, and then, while still
     holding Bailey’s hand with his right hand, he took Mae’s with his left, as if the
     three of them were about to dance. Mae felt something in her palm, and quickly closed
     her fingers around it. Then he pulled away and left.
    “I better head out, too,” Bailey said in a whisper. He turned, dazed, and walked down
     the darkened corridor.
    Afterward, when the shark was alone in the tank, and was circling, still ravenous,
     never stopping, Mae wondered how long she should remain in place, allowing the watchers
     to watch this. But she decided that as long as Stenton remained, she would, too. And
     he stayed for a long while. He couldn’t get enough of the shark, its anxious circling.
    “Until next time,” Stenton said finally. He nodded to Mae, and then to her watchers,
     who were now one hundred million, many of them terrified, many more in awe and wanting
     more of the same.
    In the bathroom stall, with the lens trained on the door, Mae brought Ty’s note close
     to her face, out of view of her watchers. He insisted on seeing her, alone, and provided
     detailed directions for where they should meet. When she was ready, he’d written,
     she need only leavethe bathroom, and then turn and say, into her live audio, “I’m going back.” It would
     imply she was returning to the bathroom, for some unnamed hygienic emergency. And
     at that moment he would kill her feed, and any SeeChange cameras that might see her,
     for thirty minutes. It would provoke a minor clamor, but it had to be done. Her life,
     he said, was at stake, and Annie’s, and her parents’. “Everyone and everything,” he’d
     written, “is teetering on the precipice.”
    This would be her last mistake. She knew it was a mistake to meet him, especially
     off-camera. But something about the shark had unsettled her, had left her susceptible
     to bad decisions. If only someone could make these decisions for her—somehow eliminate
     the doubt, the possibility of failure. But she had to know how Ty had pulled all this
     off, didn’t she? Perhaps all this was some test? It made a certain sense. If she were
     being groomed for great things, wouldn’t they test her? She knew they would.
    So she followed his directions. She left the bathroom, told her watchers she was returning,
     and when her feed went dead, she followed his directions. She descended as she had
     with Kalden that one strange night, tracing the path they’d taken when he’d first
     brought her to the room, far underground, where they housed and ran cool water through
     Stewart and everything he’d seen. When Mae arrived, she found Kalden, or Ty, waiting
     for her, his back to the red box. He’d taken off the wool hat, revealing his grey-white
     hair, but he was still wearing his hoodie, and the combination of the two men, Ty
     and Kalden, in one figure, repulsed her, and when he began walking toward her, she
     yelled “No!”
    He stopped.
    “Stay there,” she said.
    “I’m not dangerous, Mae.”
    “I don’t know anything about you.”
    “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you who I was. But I didn’t lie.”
    “You told me your name was Kalden! That’s not a lie?”
    “Besides that, I never lied.”
    “Besides that? Besides
lying about your identity
?”
    “I think you know I have no choice here.”
    “What kind of name is Kalden, anyway? You get it off some baby-name site?”
    “I did. You like it?”
    He smiled an unnerving smile. Mae had the feeling that she shouldn’t be here, that
     she should leave immediately.
    “I think I need to go,” she said, and stepped toward the stairs. “I feel like this
     is some horrific prank.”
    “Mae, think about it. Here’s my license.” He handed her his driver’s license. It showed
     a clean-shaven, dark-haired man with glasses who looked more or less like what she
     remembered Ty looked like, the Ty from the video feeds, the old photos, the portrait
     in oil outside Bailey’s library. The name read Tyson Matthew Gospodinov. “Look at
     me. No resemblance?” He retreated