Green broke the rules. The Shadow's orders were clear: do not shoot any member of the Mitchell family. Green's was to join the others at the command center and help destroy it. Instead, he found Emma Mitchell and her accomplice, and then opened fire. He badly wounded Emma and killed the other. He broke the rules.
So the Shadow put two in the man's head.
Not that it mattered anyway.
Destroying the Fujikawa-Mitchell line was not the plan.
The plan: infiltrate the Holdsworth.
And that's only phase one.
Phase two was for Green, Snapp, Steppmann, and MacTavish to die.
Green incidentally made his job easier.
Lucky break.
...
Ivanov turned around and saw a specter he hoped to never see again, “You!”
It was the Shadow. The man was not dressed like in St. Petersburg, but the eyes: Ivanov knew those eyes.
“You have come to kill me?”
“Actually,” the Shadow said. “I had not expected to find you here. That won't be a problem for long.”
Ivanov contemplated briefly and then confessed, “Ever since our meeting, I have not felt alive. After your leaving, I was already dead.”
“Nonsense,”the Shadow reached into his bloody tan jacket and drew a small syringe. “You're still alive now. You're breathing. I'm going to stop that.”
“You are a terror.”
The Shadow grabbed the Russian, who resisted, but it was to no avail. Using deadly finesse, Ivanov rapidly found himself in an armlock he could not hope to escape. All he could do was watch at the needle came down to his neck. When the slight tinge of pain hit, he knew it was over. Death beckoned.
“You have about thirty seconds,” the Shadow informed him. “You will feel no pain. No one will know what happened here. It will appear that you've died from a simple heart attack.”
Ivanov sat down on the floor and looked at the wall. Better to look at something ugly, but ordinary, than for the last thing he ever saw to be the Shadow, his murderer. Ivanov realized then that death was not that much better than his life. Before the Shadow, he was a sad, drunk old soldier. Afterwards, he was a lifeless shell, dead inside. This was nothing more than finishing the job. His heart raced.
Faster.
It hurt.
Faster.
His chest felt as if it were about to burst.
Faster.
Slower.
And then it stopped.
…
Sergei left the guest quarters and walked into the corridor. Another drop of blood stained his corrupted hands. His hands were already so red that he would not notice or even care. This was just another shattered life in a long list of murder. There was a time when he would have stopped in the corridor and just thought.... It would only have been a split-second, but that fraction of time stood for his soul.
That soul is now corroded to being long-gone.
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