(3) Not Him

Ice blue eyes pierced through mine with an intensity I was unaccustomed to. He had a gaunt face, with pronounced cheek bones and a long chin ending in a somewhat haphazard-looking white beard to match his long white eyebrows and equally white and haphazard hair which reached his collar. He stared at me for a long while, the reached a long finger up to scratch his nose. He sighed. His eyes closed and I felt as though a spotlight had been turned off my face. He turned back to his concoction and added a vial of a purple liquid to the mixture that was smoking faintly. I was still rooted to the spot. Why didn't he say anything? Why had he turned back to his work? Who was he? How did he and I relate to each other in the Beasts' schemes?
"Sir", I ventured, "where am I?" I decided that my location was the most pressing mystery at the moment. He didn't answer. I tried again, louder this time and still he didn't respond. I reached a trembling arm out to tap his shoulder and I repeated the question. He brushed my arm away as though it were a pesky fly. I tried grasping his shoulder firmly, but he shook me off. I shouted as loud as I could, and still he refused to acknowledge me. I plopped down on the sheet-covered table and rethought my strategy. I attempted to be more aggressive and turn him to face me by force, but he was too strong. That failing, my frustration reached its boiling point. I turned to the wall of flasks and selected a medium-sized one full of a pond-green liquid with a dead fish suspended in it. I threw it will all my might in his direction screaming "TELL ME!!" It smashed just a few inches from his left hand. The contents splashed all over his arm and dribbled down the counter and his left trouser leg.
He stopped his work. Slowly, he turned to face me, his eyes full of, was it pity? Then they turned to ice blocks and he took two quick strides toward me. Before I had time to react he was in my face grabbing my wrist in an uncomfortably tight grip.
"You were sent to me so I could extract some memories from your mind before I kill you. You will only be let out of this room when they are sure you are dead. Now that you know, I am going to have to restrain you." He said this with a tired lilt to his voice. As though he had been doing this sort of thing for years, but was wearied by it. He was going to kill me, after taking my memories? How was he going to accomplish this? I thought about struggling against his grip, but I realized that there was no use. I had lost everything, and now my life was going to be removed from my body along with the only thing I had that brought me any joy: my memories.
His eyes looked sad when the man saw I had lost all the fight in me. He led me silently over to the table and laid me on it. He raised straps up from the sides of it and used them to tightly bind my hands and feet. I allowed my body to go limp. There was nothing left for me to do. It was over. I was as good as dead now. But one thing puzzled me. I turned to him as he tightened my last restraint.
"What memories do they want?' I asked in a hollow voice. He stared at me for a long moment, as though he were trying to ascertain my ability to handle the answer. He must have seen something which showed him the affirmative because he said: "The memories relating to a man named John."
The fire which had died within me flared up so strong and fierce I thought I would burst into flames. Suddenly nothing else mattered. I had to escape. I had to. I couldn't let them get to him. Not him. Oh why did they want him? I could have died quietly in this cell if I knew he was safe. Not him. Not John.