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Chapter 10: Let Me Go, by Otto Octavius

"You love me, but you don't know who I am

I'm torn between this life I lead and where I stand

You love me, but you don't know who I am

So let me go, just let me go."

3 Doors Down, "Let Me Go"

Rosslyn Island is exquisite from where I sit from the private helicopter. Lush greenscape and forests appear to cover the island, making it an emerald floating in the Atlantic.

It isn't until we land that I would get a closer look at the real treasure that could soon be at least half mine. May wants the emerald, but my appetite is larger: I want the sun.

The power of the sun, again in the palm of my hand. This experience will be priceless.

That is, if Peter doesn't manage to ruin the whole thing.

I fiddle with the hem of my trenchcoat, knowing full well that my tentacles are starting to reject the holographic systems that hold them in thrall. I anxiously perform percussive maintenance on the blasted bracelet.

May looks at me, fiddling with her lace. "Oliver, are you okay?"

"I'm just fine. I'm slapping at these blasted mosquitoes."

"It is unusually hot for June, isn't it?" May fans herself with a magazine. "Must be the global warming thing that man Al Gore made a movie about."

I take the magazine from her and start fanning her myself. "Al Gore is mistaken. He is a politician, not a scientist. Climate changes come in cycles. It gets warmer, it gets hot, it cools down, there's an ice age, it gets warmer again. Why, did you know Vikings were farming and grazing animals on Greenland far before Columbus set sail?"

"Thank you, Oliver," she says as I fan her. Meanwhile, her impertinent boy is in the back seat, scratching at the seat of his tuxedo. He has a tic in his forehead right now that jumps whenever May speaks to me. It is high time, I think, for him to cut his apron strings.

The platinum blonde next to him was introduced to me as his girlfriend, Felicia. She wears a strapless lavender dress. I wonder whether I should feel relieved. The Spider-Man of my blurred memories had a redhaired girlfriend named Mary Jane.

"You know, if you look out your window right now, Peter, you can see Rosslyn Island," May says.

Peter and Felicia oblige, peering out the window. "Wow," Felicia sighs. "It's beautiful."

"Hard to believe it's all ours, isn't it?" I say. "Someday, it will be all yours. May wishes it to remain in the family."

Actually, the kid has a chance worse than a snowball living in a microwave of inheriting the Rosslyn facilities.

"So what's on this island?" Felicia says. "A summer cabin—with a sauna or a jacuzzi in the back? Just think, anytime you wanted to, you can go on your island and go boating around it in the ocean."

"What kind of boating?" Peter asks, smirking. "Canoeing or powerboating?"

"Maybe both, or we could windsurf or go waterskiing, or jetskiing. Or just swim around in the ocean and fish. Some summer fun! It must be really cool to own your own island, huh Peter?" Felicia asks.

I pull my cell out of my pocket to make sure the minister has arrived on time. He's there and quite willing to perform a quick wedding for a couple who have only known each other two weeks. He's used to this, apparently: he comes from Las Vegas.

Very cool, I smile. Very cool indeed, Miss Felicia.

Just another day in the life of Otto Octavius, called Doctor Octopus.