The Doppelgänger Paradox

 

Title: The Doppelgänger Paradox

{Non-Fiction----.}

Detective Aion had been investigating the series of murders for months, and now, the case seemed to be at its most puzzling turn. The victims were all notorious criminals who had escaped justice, each one found with the same chilling message carved into their bodies: "YOU DON'T DESERVE IT."

There had been six victims so far. Six names crossed off in a spree of deadly precision. Yet this killer, this vigilante, left behind no trace, no pattern the police could follow—except for those eerie words. 

And now, Niao.

Niao was different from the others. He wasn’t a known criminal. In fact, Niao barely existed in any official records. No photos, no social media presence, nothing. Aion stood at the scene of the crime, staring at the lifeless body of Niao. He couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling that the man lying before him was... familiar.

“Sir, we’ve searched the entire apartment,” said Officer Reed, approaching Aion. “There’s something odd about this place.”

Aion raised an eyebrow. “Odd how?”

“We didn’t find any personal belongings. No photos, no IDs, nothing. Except this,” Reed handed Aion a small metallic device, sleek, with intricate engravings along its surface.

“What is this?” Aion asked, examining the gadget. It felt heavier than it looked, cold and strange in his hands.

“No idea. We had tech take a look, and they’re stumped. But whatever it is, it seems... advanced.”

Aion nodded, deep in thought. The device seemed too important to just be left behind by the killer. The police department assumed the murderer had made a mistake in the heat of his final act—leaving this mysterious machine behind. But Aion felt otherwise. Something told him this was deliberate.

As the days passed, Aion became obsessed with the gadget. He took it home, analyzing it, running tests. It emitted faint energy signatures he couldn’t fully comprehend, but one night, as he tinkered with the device, something extraordinary happened.

The world around him shimmered, and he felt his body pulled in all directions at once. It was like being sucked into a vortex, thrown through space and time. When the sensation passed, Aion found himself standing in a place that looked identical to his own world but felt... wrong. It was like a parallel version of his reality.

Suddenly, the truth hit him. This machine, this strange device, was no ordinary gadget. It was a portal—a machine capable of transporting someone through time, space, or even between parallel universes. He’d been transported to another timeline.

His thoughts raced. Why had this machine been found at Niao’s place? And why did Niao have no photos or identification? The deeper he dug, the more he realized that Niao was an enigma.

But then, a chilling idea formed in Aion's mind—a theory that seemed too impossible to be true.

What if Niao and Aion were the same person?

Aion’s memories were a haze, but bits of them began to resurface. He remembered a mission—a vigilante mission, where he used the device to transport himself through time and dimensions, targeting criminals who had escaped justice. The machine allowed him to slip in and out of worlds unnoticed. 

But it wasn’t until one fateful encounter that everything went wrong.

Aion, or rather Niao, had made a mistake. In one of those alternate worlds, he killed an innocent man by accident. The guilt was unbearable. Niao, realizing what he had done, couldn't live with himself. So, he used the machine to kill himself, ending his rampage. But in doing so, he set in motion an endless loop of events.

As Aion pieced it all together, the final truth dawned on him: **he was Niao**. 

Niao had used the machine to escape the guilt of his actions, erasing his existence in one timeline by killing himself in another. But Aion, unaware of this fact until now, was a part of that cycle. Every time he used the machine, every time he traveled through time and space, he was unknowingly creating a new version of himself—a new iteration of the same man doomed to relive the same fate.

In his guilt, Niao had become his own executioner. Aion had become his own victim.

But the twist wasn’t complete. The truth behind the murders—the reason he had killed all those criminals—was a distorted sense of justice. Aion, once a by-the-book cop, had become a vigilante killer in alternate realities, believing that those who evaded the law didn’t deserve to live. The message carved into the bodies, "YOU DON'T DESERVE IT," wasn’t just directed at the criminals. It was a message for himself.

Standing in front of a mirror, Aion could barely recognize his own face. He realized that the man he had been chasing all along was himself—Niao, a version of him driven mad by the guilt of one wrong killing. 

The machine, still buzzing faintly in his hand, held the power to alter realities, but it also held him captive in a loop of his own making.

“I’m the killer,” Aion whispered to his reflection, horror dawning in his eyes.

In that moment, Aion made a choice. He activated the device once more, setting the coordinates to the moment before Niao’s final death. He wouldn’t let the loop continue. He would find himself—Niao—and stop the cycle, even if it meant erasing his own existence.

As the machine hummed and the world around him shimmered again, Aion disappeared, knowing that this time, he wasn’t chasing a killer.

He was chasing himself.

**The End.**