Sweat blurred my vision as the machete bit into mahogany. Above me, the banyan's serpentine branches formed a cathedral of shadows.
"Pass the struts!" My call echoed through the canopy. Below, Emma's Dolce & Gabbana camisole was streaked with engine grease as she hoisted bamboo poles. Kate stood apart, methodically sterilizing her snakebite wound with rum – our last medical supplies.
Daisy materialized silently, her paracord harness clinking with salvaged cockpit instruments. She scaled the trunk using pressure points I'd carved, combat boots finding purchase like a rock climber's. When our hands brushed passing a crossbeam, her trigger finger twitched – muscle memory from some forgotten firefight.
"Lunch break!" Kate announced with forced cheer, unwrapping leaf-wrapped boar jerky. The meat tasted of despair and lithium batteries – we'd used a cockpit emergency beacon to smoke it.
Emma flicked sweat from her diamond nose stud. "Why am I always on garbage duty?" Her Tiffany bracelet caught on a supply crate.
"Because you're shit at knots," Kate snapped. The Princeton grad's normally pristine French braid had unraveled into Medusa snakes.
Daisy's head snapped toward the eastern tree line. Her "idiot savant" act vanished as she signed military hand signals: Contact. 200 meters. Armed.
Jack emerged from the foliage, his prison tattoos glowing angry red in the sun. He carried a fish spear tipped with fuselage glass. "Nice treehouse, Boy Scout," he rasped. "Be a shame if someone... burned it down."
I chambered a round in the Glock. Daisy mirrored my action with her stolen Beretta. The standoff lasted thirteen seconds – I counted each heartbeat – before Jack melted back into the jungle.
"Found something." Kate's voice trembled as she pried open a warped Louis Vuitton trunk. Designer dresses spilled out, along with three cans of Beluga caviar. Emma lunged for the tins.
"Expired 2019." Kate's flashlight revealed the label. "Botulism risk."
The ensuing catfight would've made reality TV producers weep. Emma's manicured claws tore Kate's blouse, revealing lacerations from our crash landing. Kate retaliated by snapping Emma's Cartier sunglasses – a war crime in her social circle.
"Enough!" My gunshot startled a flock of macaws. Daisy already had both women in arm locks, her knee pressing Emma's face into the mud.
As twilight bled across the sky, we discovered the true prize – an electromagnetic pulse-shielded briefcase containing satellite phone components. Kate's shaking hands assembled the motherboard like she was defusing a bomb.
"Signal triangulated," she breathed. Red dots bloomed on the GPS – three cruise ships within 200 nautical miles.
Emma pressed against me, her whisper venomous: "Imagine the headlines if only two survivors emerge..."
Daisy chose that moment to test our new "security system" – a network of fishhooks dipped in pufferfish toxin. Her satisfied nod chilled me more than any threat.
Emma woke me with charred boar meat, grease sizzling on the makeshift grill. Daisy crouched amidst communication device components, her fingers weaving Kevlar fibers salvaged from life raft emergency kits.
"New technique." I lifted her knotwork with a tactical knife, "Alpine butterfly?"
Daisy's eyelid twitched—her telltale memory retrieval tic. Kate leaned closer, "Three times the load-bearing capacity of yesterday's."
"Military-grade parachute cord standard." I confirmed. Emma's Gucci scarf fluttered in the firelight like crime scene tape.
During watch rotation, I arranged Molotov cocktails into defensive matrices. Hyena laughter echoed through rotting meat stench, but the true predator lurked in the fuselage shadows—Jack's wing fragment spear gleamed like a shiv in moonlight.
Emma's touch startled me more than gunfire. Her Narciso perfume mingled with corpse stench into perverse pheromones: "Didn't tell princess about our...private session?"
"You deserve an Oscar." I disassembled the satellite phone, its military-grade circuit board revealing honeycomb scarring from the crash's electromagnetic pulse.
She suddenly bit my screwdriver-holding finger: "Know why I nailed Black Widow?" Blood seeped into steel threads, "Because I've actually killed."
The receiver's static screech saved me. Daisy sprang up like a lynx, tactical flashlight beam locking onto the flickering screen.
"GPS module intact!" Kate shrieked at the blinking coordinates. Emma's celebratory kiss burned my wounded finger—pain more visceral than desire.
At dawn, Daisy bound Jack to tidal rocks with paracord. Rising tides advanced 15cm hourly—an improvised waterboarding simulation.
"Signal transmission requires 48-hour stable power." I assigned tasks while monitoring Jack's swollen eyelids, "Kate cleans solar panels, Emma..."
"Scouting route." The starlet brandished her Maserati-key-turned-machete, "Research for Cast Away 2."
When helicopter rotors finally thrummed, Daisy was weaving bear traps for bipedal predators. Jack bared teeth at approaching aircraft while Emma hid bloodstained coral in her Dior clutch.