David's jaw clenched and a vein in his temple throbbed. "Not everything we do is about killing, Noelle. We keep this country safe. We protect people."
"But you do kill." It wasn't really a question.
"When it's necessary."
"And who gets to decide when it's necessary?"
He scrubbed a wide hand over his head and pulled in a deep breath as if to calm himself. "There are a lot of bad people out there. It's not exactly something we broadcast on the nightly news if we can help it. We like for people to be able to sleep at night, not worry about whether or not they're going to wind up dead in ways they can't even imagine."
"You keep saying 'we,' Are you one of the people who get to choose between life and death for another human?"
David exploded into angry motion, flinging the chair away. "Yeah, I'm one of those people. I've held men in my rifle sights and decided whether or not to pull the trigger. I've set explosives on a building knowing that as soon as I pushed the button everyone inside was going to be blown to hell. I've even killed with my bare hands, breaking men's necks or choking the life right out of their bodies."
He leaned forward, his hands flat on the table, his eyes frigid blue with anger. "And I'm not sorry because I know what those men did. I know what they would have been capable of doing had they lived."
Noelle leaned back in her chair, needing to put some distance between her and his anger. But even in the face of such rage, she still thrust her chin up, refusing to back down on what was important. "You can't know what is in a person's heart. And if you can't know that, you can't judge them. It's wrong."
His nostrils flared as he studied her face. She wanted to get up and move across the room, but she held her ground under his scrutiny.
Slowly, he leaned down and picked up the briefcase he'd brought with him. His voice was no longer loud, but it was just as cold. "No, Noelle, you're the one who's wrong. I do know what was in their hearts." And with that, he pulled a stack of glossy eight-by-ten photos from a folder and flung them out over the table.
It was a collage from a nightmare in shades of blood and dead flesh. There were severed limbs, fingers, ears, tongues. Half of a penis. The faces of the victims were so badly beaten and mutilated they were nearly unrecognizable as human. There were men, women and even a couple of children that couldn't have even lived into their teens. Two dead babies.
Noelle fought the urge to vomit. She'd seen her share of horror films, but nothing could have prepared her for the real thing. Even with the added detachment of photos, she could almost smell the stench of blood and fear emanating from the pictures.
Her body started to shake and sweat as her mind struggled to assimilate what he'd shown her. This wasn't real. It couldn't be. No one was that horrible.
"This," he said in a quiet, aching voice, pointing at the photos. "This is what was in their hearts."
Noelle didn't want to look, but she couldn't stop herself. Her stomach clenched painfully, but she forced herself to face the images of death and violence and evil with as much courage as she could. These were real photos. Real people. Real children.
Noelle's eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them away, looking up at David. Anguish burned in his blue eyes, which were also wet with unshed tears. His jaw was clenched and his lips were pulled into a snarl of self-loathing.
"And this one." His voice was nearly a whisper now, quiet with the tightness of grief. With a shaking hand, he pulled out a set of photos showing what had once been a beautiful young blonde woman. She was bound to a metal chair by thick leather cuffs around both wrists and ankles. She was naked and bruised over much of her tanned skin.
There was a pool of blood under her chair that looked too large to have ever fit inside her slim body. Her thighs were stained with more blood and every one of her fingers had been severed and were lying neatly in rows on a table at her side. "This woman was my wife. My Mary." He swallowed audibly before he could continue. "The Swarm did this to her. They raped her and tortured her and beat her for the crime of being married to me. Nothing more. She was supposed to be safe at home while I was out on a training op. I wouldn't have even known she'd been taken if I hadn't received her wedding ring—still attached to her severed finger—in the mail."
It was the quiet grief in his voice that made Noelle look up. He'd loved Mary. She could see it plainly, shining in his eyes, along with anguish, regret and self-hatred. He'd loved this woman and they had mutilated her.
Suddenly, all the people in the photos became real, not just images on paper. They had parents and siblings and friends who loved them. They'd laughed and cried and loved in return. They were people. Alive.
Turned into photos too grotesque to imagine.
David looked up from the photos and stared right into her eyes. There was so much pain there inside him that she couldn't look away. She felt that if she averted her gaze, even for a second, David would crumple under the weight of his guilt. She could tell that he felt like he should have saved his wife from this gruesome fate. Noelle was sure that he'd done everything he could to save the woman he loved, and it still hadn't been enough.
"This is what we're fighting, Noelle. This is why we need your help. Without you, the Swarm will find those weapons and they won't hesitate to use them. People will die, and only you can stop that from happening." His voice fell to a mere whispering thread of sound. "Please, don't let that happen. Don't let someone else's wife be tortured and killed like my Mary."
Noelle's body shook in rebellion against David's plea. How could he ask this of her? How could he ask her to throw away all her morals and do what she'd sworn she'd never do? What if her work was used to kill?
A tiny, new voice inside her answered, What if it wasn't used to kill those monsters?
Noelle forced herself to look at the photos again. David was right. Whoever had done this deserved to die. They needed to die before they could kill again. No matter how ugly or horrible the task was, someone needed to do it. The Swarm wasn't a group of people. It was a group of demons. Pure evil.
Someone had to stop them, but Noelle wasn't sure if she was strong enough to be that person.