John Stalvern waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were demons in the base. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Cernel Joson were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
John was a space marine for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the spaceships and he said to dad "I want to be on the ships daddy."
Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY DEMONS"
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the space station base of the UAC he knew there were demons.
"This is Joson" the radio crackered. "You must fight the demons!"
So John gotted his palsma rifle and blew up the wall.
"HE GOING TO KILL US" said the demons
"I will shoot at him" said the cyberdemon and he fired the rocket missiles. John plasmaed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.
"No! I must kill the demons" he shouted
The radio said "No, John. You are the demons"
And then John was a zombie.

~~

John Stalvern waited, cherishing the few moments of rest he would be given throughout this ordeal he had found himself in. It was in bated breath, and relaxation was out of the question in the dim lighting, occasionally blinking with the sparks that shot forth due to the broken and faulty wiring. The demons he had expected to appear in reality for years now had finally shown themselves. Through some horrible twist of fate, it was the very base he was stationed at that had seen their first attack. Despite his incessant warnings to Colonel Joson, they had been caught completely off guard, and now it was too late. Though, through that same twisting of fate, perhaps it could be said it was only too late for the time being - All hope lost but for a moment before a savior appears.

John had been a space marine for fourteen years, the memory of his most recent anniversary still fresh in his mind. Musing over his situation quickly brought forth a weak chuckle; Under siege by demons, and his thoughts were still wandering among such inconsequential things. In an effort to make some coherence out of his thoughts, he resolved to think of more important memories - Even failing that, he would at least have a glimpse of things he would like to see again, and things he wished he had seen sooner.

As a young boy, John had always loved watching space ships pass by with his father - Something about them simply entranced him, perhaps their size, or the unbelievable firepower even the most mundane passenger ship carried. Perhaps it was that within their sturdy walls were held thousands of lives dedicated to keeping peace and helping those in need, or perhaps it was that those same lives would be taken to places he couldn't even fathom the distance of. Regardless of the reason, he loved those ships, and wanted nothing more than to be a part of that great mechanism.

One day, unable to hold back his glee after watching a particularly impressive display of the newest technology piloted by the most skilled people in the business, he tugged at his father's sleeve with stars in his eyes and, pointing at a ship as it prepared to set off on its maiden voyage, shouted, "Daddy, I wanna ride on those ships when I grow up! I'm gonna see everything in space!"

In an instant, through some leap of logic that he couldn't begin to understand as a child, his father grew more serious than he had ever seen him before. With an almost inhuman passion shining through his eyes, he scolded his son. "No. Absolutely not! You have no idea what happens in those ships, to those people! John, you'll be killed by demons!" To this day he never could pin whether his father meant that in the literal sense or if it was some metaphor for the people he had to fight, though in his many years he was beginning to lean toward the latter. Hell, maybe he was just playing some kind of horrible practical joke on him.

Regardless of what it was meant to be, it shook John to his roots; He would never forget that phrase, that terrifying look on his father's face. For a time, he took those words terribly literally, and almost gave up on his dream. Ultimately though, time went on and with it the innocence and trust of a child gave way to the raging rebellion in a teenage heart, and only just in time for him to come of age and join the space marines.

Which brings us back to the beginning: Joke or truth, metaphor or literal, he was now sharing the space station base of the UAC with real life demons. A crackling from his radio broke his reverie, and quickly replaced it with a wave of both relief and dread. "This is Joson," came a familiar voice through the static. Hot damn, Colonel, you're still alive! "You've gotta fight these things, Stalvern, we need every good hand out here if any one of us is gonna make it home!"

Wasting no time, John picked up the plasma rifle he had previously laid on the floor. It was a dead weight if it wasn't shooting something as far as he was concerned, and he needed to take the most out of those precious few minutes he had to recoup. This was an uphill battle, and a steep one at that. So how to attack...The base was a labyrinth, and he could take advantage of that. His knowledge of the passageways would give him a huge advantage over any mere beast.

Yeah...All right, so we'll ambush them. The element of surprise is one of the strongest, right?

Even before this thought had fully formed, the wall before him shattered like glass on impact with the plasma rounds. Anything not made specifically to resist them was about as good as paper. As the dust settled, a room filled with the bloodied and glowing forms of demons was revealed, their bodies deformed and twisted in ways that he didn't want to comprehend. He'd seen a lot of dead things in his day that didn't look too dissimilar to these, but seeing them alive and moving was disgusting in its own right. Pushing the urge to vomit down with his own bloodlust, he made quick work of a number of demons.

"HE'S GOING TO KILL US!"
The cowards were the first to go. Even within the gnarled battle cries of the crowd of demons that met him, he could make out panicked words crying louder than any of them. What were they even doing here? A battlefield is no place for such a pathetic being.
"EAT HIM ALIVE!"
The jeers of the others, perhaps for morale or perhaps as an honest order. Could it have been that there was some kind of caste system? Were these things capable of forming a civilization, an actual culture? Or was it just the cockiest of the demons, shouting their desires unhindered by such a civilization? Either way, John refused to let them follow through, mercilessly shooting blast after glorious blast of plasma into the ever-shrinking crowd.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"
Blood god? Religion? More evidence for their so-called culture. More reasons they shouldn't have come to his station.

His thoughts raced as fast as his trigger finger, both accelerated by his situation and his adrenaline to the point where he could hardly hear what might have been a deafening battle had any others been present to hear it. Maybe it was the very fact that he could lose himself like this that let him survive. Another man might actually start taking their ruminations seriously.

John Stalvern was not another man. Lasting fourteen years in the space marines was almost unheard of, and he had accomplished it only through a unique blend of paranoia and merciless bloodshed. Whatever they were, it didn't matter. However they thought, it didn't matter. What mattered was protecting himself and his home, so that he and the rest of the universe would have something to wake up to tomorrow, which conveniently coincided with his orders: Get rid of these monsters.

A bloodcurtling battle cry, like a cougar mixed with nails on a chalkboard heard underwater, escaped the lips - Lips? Can you call those lips? - of one of the demons, a sick, twisted hybrid of beast and machine. "Stand back, I'm shootin' 'im!" What, was it claiming him as its kill? Is this a sport for them? From some orifice that he couldn't find a name for a number of missiles flew toward him, and were met by the blast of a plasma beam. For just a moment, the world was white. For the first time in fourteen years, John was stunned, hesitating to pull the trigger before the massive explosion and subsequent debris that met his eyes. It had to be a trick - no missile he'd ever seen or heard of for that matter could pack that much firepower into a single case. They were...flares, or...Oh, God, it was real. Pieces of the ceiling fell helplessly, no longer supported by the weak and cracked structure that had been obliterated by that blast, and it was his only hope that those missiles were the demon army's answer to his plasma rifle: As powerful as it gets.

But in the heat of battle, there's no time to stop for that. John's muscles strained desperately; He couldn't think, he couldn't see through the red mists of rage, all he knew was that there were still shouts coming from across the room, from those monstrosities. Why wasn't he moving? He was supposed to be moving. A man doesn't run like this and not move. Come on, legs! Faster!

...Legs? A shot of pain, delayed by God knows what, hit him harder than anything he had ever felt before, along with the striking realization that everything was still red. His legs were crushed under the remains of the ceiling, he was still blinded though by his own blood now, and for all he wanted to shout his pain to the world, he could muster the strength for but a whisper, "Not like this..." Somehow it had still managed to carry enough force to echo off the walls along with his and the demons' despairing cries and his strength found him once more, "NO! I'M NOT GOING OUT LIKE THIS! THESE THINGS NEED TO DIE!"
"No, John," A voice from the radio, one he didn't know. It rumbled through the static, a deep and commanding tone, and in that moment all sound was gone from the room. "You do."

As it spoke, absolute horror dawned over him as he looked upon his work. The corpses that lined the room were no more deformed than how they were left from battle. The sound of emergency sirens roared over his own heavy breathing, and the smell of blood assaulted his nose. Troops he had served beside for years lay before him, never to rise again.

In that moment, he knew: He was the only demon here.