The Twin Fallacy

Attending Rigel University was my twin sister’s secret.

Until she was murdered.

Rigel was a specialized school for Criminal Justice and Human Behavior, yet it couldn’t protect one of its own students.

I guess us crime lords just... did it better. Come blood or ruin, the Fontaine family’s devotion didn’t end at the grave.

The wrought-iron gates of the university closed behind me with a mechanical click, and a security camera turned, following the snap of my low heels against the cobblestone pathway.

It seemed to study me a beat too long before a second camera pivoted to take over, tracking my figure as I moved between the students.

I lifted my chin, letting Rigel’s security record my face: the high cheekbones, aquiline nose, and hooded grey eyes. The ghost of my sister’s features.

Whoever the killer was, I wanted him haunted by Helen.

My sister might have left the family business for a civilian life, but she was my better half.

My favorite memory was when we’d escaped our bodyguards after our graduation ball. We’d snuck out at 2 AM for greasy burgers and sloppy fries at a mom-and-pop shop.

It was the one night I hadn’t felt the weight of our parents’ sins or the blood money that built our empire.

An autumn breeze stirred and the oak trees leading to the East side of campus swayed while students tugged at the collars of their coats.

I moved with the crowd, scrolling through my first-year timetable on my phone.

08:10: Criminal Psychology with Prof. Myers. Room 13B.

I closed the note on my calendar before my thumb stilled over the messages app.

It had been four weeks, and I still hadn’t deleted Helen’s last texts.

She’d said she’d met a guy, a professor at Rigel, and they were happy.

I told her it was stupid to get involved with an older civilian. She was twenty-two. People with our history didn’t get happy endings.

Helen had left me on read.

Two weeks later, I learned she was dead from a campus newsletter.

Heiress of a local law firm, Squires and Fontaine, found dead in her dorm room.

It didn’t mention she’d been stabbed, or that her university-issued laptop was missing. My people had to pull strings to dig that up.

That’s when I enrolled in this rotten university.

My jaw tensed, and I took a sharp left toward the Psychology building.

Its lawns were trimmed with obsessive perfection, and every rose bush was shaped with austere symmetry. Two weeks and all the university had to show for my sister’s death were manicured gardens and a scripted eulogy on their website.

They didn’t acknowledge her good grades. There was no suspension of a professor. No mention of the missing laptop.

The records had been picked clean, as if Rigel were vultures stripping a carcass.

I exhaled slowly as I walked through the double doors. “I’ll make sure it’s their last meal.”

The lecture hall was full when I arrived. A few students glanced up from their laptops, brows furrowed, before their focus drifted back to their notes. One girl whispered behind a slender hand, her silver watch catching the warm glow of the overhead lights.

The bench creaked as I sat near the front and unpacked my spiral-bound notebook and pencil bag. As I highlighted the date in yellow, I suppressed a smile.

Helen used to tease me about the color-coding, but she was far sillier than me. Before her final exams, she used to hunt for unicorn erasers at the China shop. She said it helped her ace the essay questions.

But that was before this place took her.

My expression turned cold at the thought. I couldn’t dwell on it. Not when I was investigating.

Murmurs dipped as footsteps entered. Heavy. Confident.

Austin Myers. Rigel’s newest faculty member.

I capped my highlighter and glanced at him through my lashes, careful not to meet his eyes. If this man was involved, I wanted to see it without him knowing.

He was younger than I’d expected from a man who’d consulted for the FBI. Thirty and a prodigy, if the rumors on late-night student forums were true.

Myers ran a hand through his russet curls, the reddish shine contrasting with his tan skin.

He adjusted the collar of his sweater, studying the students before his gaze landed on me.

His fingers stilled against the woolen fabric, and I straightened as his shoulders tensed.

Myers ducked his head and grabbed a marker.

STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT, 1971.

The whiteboard squeaked as he wrote and I twirled my pen, watching the red ink smudge under his palm. He wrote in all-caps with clipped strokes. It was curt, as if he could carve space between us with his words.

“So, you did know her,” I murmured to myself.

It made sense; he was new to the university. Probably still deemed an outsider by his colleagues. A hard-working student like my sister would have, perhaps, softened the blow of a hostile environment.

Maybe he’d inquired about her case and knew more than I did about what happened in her dorm.

Or he was the one who’d whispered sweet nothings to my sister.

Which, for some reason, bothered me more.

I scoffed and reached for a green pen to copy the heading into my notebook. My handwriting turned fast and fluid, as if my mind begged me to slip away before this got complicated.

But it already was a mess.

“Today we’ll discuss Zimbardo’s prison experiment,” Myers said, his voice smooth and carrying a faint New York accent. “Not for its scientific merit, which time has largely discredited, but to ask why the psyche plunges into cruelty when given power.”

He paced the room, and I watched his hands as he spoke. No tremor. They were steadier now that he could discuss something familiar. College students being divided into guards and prisoners. The aggression. The submission. And the disturbing ease with which both accepted their roles.

Myers paused, leaning his hip against his desk as he crossed his arms. The soft click of laptop keys and rustle of paper filled the room.

“The simulation was intended to last two weeks.” he said. “It was aborted after six days. Which leads one to ask why the guards chose brutality so quickly.”

His gaze drifted back to me and stayed. He tilted his head and a curl fell across his forehead.

I refused to blink.

“Maybe the guards thought that’s what the system expected from them.” My tone was conversational but pointed. “The psychologists, according to later accounts, had told the guards that aggression was acceptable. If anything, the authority figures had tainted the experiment with their own biases.”

Myers’s hands dug into his crossed arms. A pen stopped scratching behind me, and the girl with the silver watch turned in her seat.

He could agree that those in power had made the monsters or admit that something dangerous lurked in all of us.

Whichever he chose, he’d have to say it to my face and be reminded of the student his colleagues had failed. A young woman who never stood a chance in a rigged system.

The silence pulled taut as my challenge was left unanswered. A few students exchanged glances, and the girl with the silver watch smirked.

“The first-year is already making friends, huh?” she said to the guy next to her. He snorted, pretending to turn a page in his textbook.

My stomach twisted.

On the streets, between shadowed corners and the glint of guns, I might have gotten away with baiting Myers. But in these halls, I was just another student with an ego that rivaled his own.

The professor pushed off his desk and moved toward me, his footsteps measured and unhurried as his hands slid into his pockets.

I swallowed, and his gaze dropped to my throat before meeting my eyes.

“Your name?”

It wasn’t a question. Not after the way he’d reacted earlier.

He wanted me to pick a role in his class, guard or prisoner, but I hadn’t come here to submit.

“Eris,” I said, my voice steady even as my pulse hammered at the base of my neck. “Fontaine. If you want that, too.”

The name dropped like poison in water, rippling through the room. Students whispered and words drifted between them in hushed fractures.

“Fontaine? Like the dead girl…?”

“Rigel never mentioned...”

“They look the same...”

The girl with the silver watch let out a delighted gasp and rested a hand over her heart. “A twin?”

Myers’s expression remained unreadable, but his gaze traced the curve of my jaw and the way my hair fell against my cheek. As if remembering something he’d rather bury. Or someone.

“Right.” He turned to the board without glancing back and I paused.

His tone was resigned, disappointed even, which made my victory feel hollow. As if my decision to enroll at Rigel was going to hurt me more than anyone else.