My heart is still pounding furiously as the island drops out of sight behind me. Will my auto-gyro have enough gas to make it to the nearby island of Tanarowa? I can't bring myself to care. Not after what I've witnessed in the mad doctor's accursed lab, nestled deep in the crater of an extinct South Seas volcano.

Can it be that it was just three days ago that I arrived at the docks of that fetid jungle lair, full of vim and academic curiosity, chatting excitedly with my colleagues from around the scientific community? I am the only one of that august delegation to escape. I leave behind my peers, now chained to desks in the mad doctor's R&D department, condemned to a waking death as the doctor harnesses their brainpower for his own evil ends.

But I shed not a tear, as I angle the ultra-light due North, for those I left behind. I am not leaving my friends behind. My friends died long before they were led into the dark recesses of the volcano complex. Those that now toil for the doctor are merely things. Things that once were men.