Chapter 3: Marked Property
Amy swam up from a depth of dreamless, black exhaustion. Consciousness returned in painful increments: the gritty feeling behind her eyelids, a dry ache in her throat, the aggressive stiffness in her… everything. Her body felt used, rearranged. She was on her back, tangled in damp sheets that smelled overwhelmingly of sex, sweat, and something sweetly chemical, like ozone after a storm.
The light was wrong. It wasn’t the blue static of her monitor, but a dull, grayish-orange filtering through the slats of her blinds. Morning. Late morning, judging by the angle.
Then she felt the warmth. The pressure.
She opened her eyes. Her glasses were folded on the nightstand. The world was a soft-focused blur, but the shapes were unmistakable. Chloe’s blonde head was buried in her lap, moving with a slow, relentless rhythm. Amy could feel the tight, wet heat, the practiced undulation of a throat working around her. She was already fully, thickly erect—a heavy, insistent presence that seemed to have grown even more substantial overnight. The sensation was distant at first, muted by sleep, then it surged forward, central and demanding.
A low moan escaped her. It wasn’t just from the physical刺激. It was a groan of sheer, overwhelmed reality.
Chloe pulled off with a soft, wet pop, looking up. Her face, even blurred, was radically altered. Her lips were still a lush, bruised-looking pillow. Her cheeks seemed fuller, her eyes wider, her expression one of serene, empty devotion. A thin strand of saliva connected her mouth to Amy’s tip. She smiled.
“Good morning,” she whispered, her voice raspy. “You were twitching. I thought you might be dreaming.”
“Chloe,” Amy croaked. Her own voice was wrecked.
“Shhh. It’s okay.” Chloe dipped her head and took Amy back into her mouth, deeper this time, until Amy felt the head nudge the back of her throat. Chloe held it there, her nose pressed into Amy’s pubic bone, her body utterly still in a display of perfect, breathless submission.
From the other side of the bed came a soft, slick sound. Amy turned her head. Maya was on her side, facing Amy. One of her own hands—her fingers looking oddly slender compared to the new, heavy fullness of her breasts—was working between her legs. She was watching Amy, her dark eyes glassy with pleasure, her new, fuller lips parted. She’d changed even more. Her skin held that deep, permanent bronze tone. Her hips were a dramatic curve under the sheet, and her breasts were truly enormous, spilling to the side as she lay. She met Amy’s gaze and didn’t stop.
“She’s been thirsty since dawn,” Maya murmured, her voice a low, amused thrum. “I had my turn earlier.” She bit her lip, her rhythm faltering for a second as a small shudder went through her. “Almost there again, just watching her.”
This was madness. A beautiful, warm, wet madness. The fear from the night before was still there, a cold pebble in Amy’s gut, but it was being drowned out by the visceral reality of Chloe’s mouth, by the sight of Maya touching herself, by the sheer, impossible fact of her own body, thick and hard and wanted. A flush of possessive heat washed through her. This was hers. She did this.
She reached down and tangled her fingers in Chloe’s hair, not guiding, just claiming. Chloe moaned around her, the vibration exquisite. Amy’s hips gave an involuntary thrust.
Chloe gagged, gently, then relaxed her throat, taking it. Tears of effort gleamed at the corners of her eyes. She loved it.
“Look at her,” Maya breathed, her own movements becoming more frantic. “She’s so happy. We’re so happy, Amy. Just let go. Give it to us.”
The permission, the need in Maya’s voice, shattered the last of Amy’s resistance. A tension she’d been holding since puberty, a clenched fist in her soul, finally released. This was her truth. Not a secret to bury, but a force to wield.
She tightened her grip in Chloe’s hair and began to move. Not the frantic, desperate pounding of the night before, but a slow, deep, measured rhythm. She fucked Chloe’s face with a calm, terrifying certainty. Chloe’s hands came up to rest on Amy’s thighs, her fingers kneading the muscle there, encouraging her. She was making tiny, choked sounds of encouragement with every inward stroke.
Maya’s breathing hitched. “Yes. Like that. Show her. Show me.”
Amy watched Maya’s hand move faster, watched her back arch, her huge breasts shaking with the motion. The sight tipped her over the edge. The climax built not as a surprise, but as an inevitable tide. It started deep in her core, a rolling, profound ache of release, and surged outward.
“Chloe,” she warned, her voice a guttural command.
Chloe’s eyes widened. She tried to pull back, but Amy held her firmly in place. She shook her head, her meaning clear. Take it.
The first pulse was violent. Amy felt her own body lock, every muscle tensing. She felt the release travel the length of her shaft and flood directly into Chloe’s throat. Chloe’s eyes rolled back. She swallowed convulsively, but there was too much, it was too thick. It spilled from the corners of her stretched lips.
Amy kept going, wave after wave, a seemingly endless geyser of pent-up release. It was more than physical; it felt like she was pumping her very essence, her confusion and her power, into the willing vessel of her friend.
Maya cried out, a sharp, broken sound, as her own orgasm hit. Her body bowed off the bed, her hand a blur between her legs. She shuddered violently, her gaze locked on the spectacle before her.
Finally, the torrent slowed. Amy’s body went limp, spent. She released Chloe’s hair.
Chloe pulled back, gasping, strings of thick fluid still connecting her ruined lips to Amy’s glistening flesh. She didn’t wipe it away. She looked dazed, radiant, fulfilled. She swallowed with difficulty, a blissful smile on her face.
“Thank you,” she whispered hoarsely.
The room was silent except for their ragged breathing. The gray morning light seemed to solidify, making the scene stark, real, inescapable. Amy looked from Chloe’s spent, worshipful face to Maya’s sated, heavy-lidded expression.
Maya was the first to move. She sluggishly pushed herself up on one elbow, her breasts swaying heavily. She studied Amy with a lazy, catlike satisfaction.
“You’re bigger,” she stated simply. It wasn’t a question. It was a data point.
Amy looked down at herself. Maya was right. Her flaccid state was still substantial, thicker and longer than it had been just yesterday. A fresh, low thrum of anxiety mixed with the afterglow. “It… it keeps happening.”
“Obviously,” Maya said, a hint of her old analytical tone returning. She reached out with her clean hand and touched Amy’s thigh. “The transformations are proportional. Connected to arousal. To release.” She glanced at Chloe, who was dreamily licking her lips. “And to consumption.”
Chloe nodded, her eyes clearing slightly. “It’s like… food. But better. It makes me feel… whole.” She shifted, wincing a little. “I’m so full, though. I can feel it… inside.”
Amy sat up slowly, the world tilting. The scent of her own release was everywhere, mingled with the girls’ perfumes and sweat. It was primal. Animal. “What are we doing?” she asked, the words small in the thick air.
“We’re learning,” Maya said, sitting up fully. The sheet fell to her waist, showcasing the dramatic new geography of her body. “We’re documenting a phenomenon. You are a phenomenon, Amy.” There was no fear in her voice, only fierce, hungry curiosity. “You need to understand it. We need to help you understand it.”
“Understand what?” Amy’s voice cracked. “That I’m a freak who… who changes people? Who needs to change people?”
“You’re not a freak.” Chloe crawled up the bed, resting her head on Amy’s shoulder. Her body was warm, soft, and utterly changed. “You’re a miracle. You made us better. More… us.”
Maya nodded. “Chloe’s right, in her way. Look at her. The bubbly, superficial journalism student is gone. What’s left is… purer. A vessel for devotion. And me?” She gave a wry, beautiful smile. “The aloof, intellectual librarian? Gone. I want to study this, yes. But I also want to serve it. To serve you. The desire is… biochemical. It’s in my cells now.” She leaned closer, her scent enveloping Amy. “We can’t go back. So we have to go forward. We have to know the limits.”
A sharp knock rattled the door.
All three of them froze.
“Amy? You in there?” It was a male voice. Ethan, from down the hall. “Your phone’s been buzzing non-stop for like, an hour. Sounds like it’s on your desk. It’s driving me nuts trying to study.”
Reality crashed back in, cold and mundane. The outside world. Classes. Assignments. People who weren’t part of this.
“I’m here!” Amy called out, her voice surprisingly steady. “Sorry! I’ll get it!”
“Whatever. Just… silence it, yeah?” Ethan’s footsteps receded.
The spell was broken, but the charge in the room remained. They were sitting in a sex-soaked bed, transformed and covered in the evidence, while the dull Tuesday morning of midterms carried on just outside the door.
Maya was the first to move with purpose. She swung her legs out of bed, her new body moving with a heavy, graceful confidence. She picked her t-shirt off the floor—it would never fit her now—and simply used it to wipe herself clean. She tossed it into a corner.
“We need supplies,” she said, thinking aloud. “Water. Food. Proper clothes that fit.” She looked at Chloe. “You can’t go back to your dorm like that.”
Chloe looked down at her own body, at the swollen breasts that strained her stretched bra, the new, womanly curves. “No,” she said, a flicker of her old self-awareness returning. “I can’t.”
“My place,” Maya decided. “It’s off-campus. Private. We can figure out our next steps there.”
“Our next steps?” Amy echoed, pulling the sheet around herself.
Maya turned to her, naked and magnificent, her eyes blazing with a terrifying, exhilarating conviction. “Yes,” she said softly. “You don’t think this stops with us, do you? A power like this… it wants to be used. It needs to be understood.” She stepped closer, cupping Amy’s cheek. Her hand was warm, possessive. “And we’re going to help you. Starting now. Get dressed. We’re leaving.”
Amy looked from Maya’s determined face to Chloe’s placid, adoring one. The fear was still there, a cold, small knot. But beneath it, coiling like a living thing, was something else: a dark, thrilling sense of possibility. She was not alone. Her secret was out, and it had created its own disciples.
She nodded slowly.
The first step was getting out of this room, past the normal world waiting in the hallway. The rest, the terrifying, unknown rest, would come after
Getting dressed was an absurd performance. Maya and Chloe scavenged clothes from the floor and Amy’s closet with a quiet, focused energy. Nothing fit right. Maya, squeezed into a too-small spaghetti-strap tank top she’d borrowed from Amy, left nothing to the imagination; the thin cotton strained over her new chest, pulling tight across the soft, dark circles of her nipples which she made no effort to conceal. Her jeans, unbuttoned, hung low on her dramatically flared hips, exposing the sharp line of her hip bones and the lacy edge of her underwear.
Chloe fared no better. She found a too-tight vintage band tee, its fabric thin from years of wear. It hugged every new curve of her torso, the dampening at her nipples visible. She paired it with short denim cutoffs that Amy hadn’t worn since high school, the frayed hems riding high on her transformed thighs. They didn’t look like college students anymore. They looked like cheap fantasy, cartoon versions of sex. It was deliberate, Amy realized. A statement in smudged eyeliner and exposed skin.
“I feel stupid,” Amy muttered, trying to force the button on her own jeans.
They popped open immediately. Her usual loose-fitting khakis, tented obscenely, announced the substantial weight resting against her thigh. Even her thickest hoodie, pulled low, did little to hide the distinct, heavy bulge. Every normal piece of clothing was a betrayal, accentuating the change rather than concealing it. She felt monstrous, an awkward, bulky secret shuffling through the bright, indifferent hallway.
“We look the part,” Maya said flatly, catching Amy’s panicked look in the mirror. She wasn’t judging; she was assessing. “It’s authentic. People see what they expect to see. They’ll think we had a wild party, that you got lucky. It’s better than the truth.”
Chloe just smiled, tracing a finger along her own collarbone as if rediscovering it. “What’s wrong with looking lucky?”
The walk out was a gauntlet. The hall smelled of microwaved noodles and disinfectant. Amy kept her head down, the hood pulled up, her posture hunched. She imagined her silhouette through the fabric, a blatant, unmovable truth jutting forward. Footsteps echoed behind them. A muttered, “Damn,” from some guy they passed. A low whistle. Maya, walking beside her with a queen’s posture, met the whistler’s gaze with a cool, dismissive smirk that shut him up.
“Ignore them,” she breathed to Amy. “They’re just background noise. None of them matter anymore.”
The drive to Maya’s place was a silent, cloistered journey in her old sedan. The world outside the windows—bike messengers, students crossing streets, the whole tedious machinery of Tuesday—felt like footage from a different life. Amy sat in the passenger seat, painfully aware of her anatomy pressed against the seatbelt. Chloe lounged in the back, humming softly, trailing her fingers along the glass.
Maya’s apartment was a quiet third-floor walk-up above a closed bookstore. It was neat, sparsely decorated, smelling of old paper, jasmine tea, and dust. It felt like a sanctuary, a library after hours. The moment the door clicked shut, the tension in Amy’s shoulders loosened a fraction.
“Make yourself at home,” Maya said, kicking off her shoes. “I need to go out.Supplies. Clothes that actually fit this… situation.” She gestured at their bodies.
“You’re going out like that?” Amy asked, her voice small in the quiet room.
Maya looked down at her own straining top. “It’s efficient.” Her gaze was distant, calculating. “There’s a café down the block. Students from the community college. I’ll be fast.”
Before Amy could protest, Maya was gone, the door closing with a soft, definitive click. The apartment settled into a profound silence. Chloe drifted to Maya’s small, organized bookshelf, tracing the spines. Amy stood frozen in the center of the living room, her useless hoodie still on, her body a foreign country.
“It’s so quiet here,” Chloe said, not turning around. “I can hear the pipes in the walls.” She finally looked at Amy, her eyes clear and unnervingly calm. “Are you scared?”
“Yes,” Amy answered. It was the only honest thing.
“Don’t be.” Chloe padded over on bare feet. She took Amy’s hands, which were cold, and placed them on her own waist, on the warm skin above the denim cutoff. “Feel that? I’m real. This is real. And it’s yours.” She leaned in, her heavy breasts pressing against Amy’s covered arm. Her new, pillowy lips brushed Amy’s ear. “Let me show you.”
They didn’t make it to the bedroom. It happened on the worn Persian rug in Maya’s living room, a slow, quiet exploration in the slatted afternoon light. This time there was no frantic discovery, just a deep, languid taking. Chloe guided Amy into herself with a sigh that sounded like homecoming, her body accepting the impossible girth with a practiced, eager ease that spoke of a fundamental, physiological rewrite. Amy watched her own transformed body move, watched Chloe’s blissful, absorbed face, and felt a terrifying, giddy power settle into her bones. She was a fact. This was happening.
After, curled on the floor as their breathing slowed, Chloe drowsing with her head on Amy’s thigh, a key scraped in the lock. The door opened.
Maya stepped inside. She wasn’t alone. A young woman, probably around their age, stood just behind her in the hallway. She had sharp, intelligent features, an expensive-looking asymmetrical haircut dyed silver at the tips, and an expression of wary curiosity. She wore a tailored blazer over a graphic t-shirt. She wasn’t a Chloe-type. She looked like she wrote angry poetry and ran a political podcast.
“Amy,” Maya said, her voice low and even, the voice of a researcher presenting a groundbreaking find. She nudged the new woman fully into the apartment and closed the door. The lock engaged with a heavy, final sound. “This is Sloane. She writes for the Pierpoint Weekly. The alt-paper.”
Sloane’s eyes swept the scene with journalistic detachment that couldn’t quite mask her shock: Chloe, nude and sprawled and leaking Amy’s spend onto the rug; Amy herself, half-dressed, her obscene anatomy on full display in the slanting light. Her gaze lingered on Amy, analytical, sizing her up.
Maya stepped closer to Amy, putting a casual, possessive hand on her shoulder. “We got to talking at the cafe,” she explained, her words deliberate. “About transformative experiences. About hidden truths society refuses to see. I showed her a photo on my phone.” She paused. “A close-up. Of you. From this morning.”
Amy’s blood ran cold. She looked at Sloane, who hadn’t looked away. The woman’s eyes held no horror. They held a sharp, piercing intensity.
“She was skeptical at first,” Maya continued, a smile playing on her lips. “Then fascinated. Then… something else.”
Sloane finally broke her stare from Amy and glanced at Maya, a silent, charged communication passing between them. She licked her lips, a nervous gesture. When she spoke, her voice was dry, papery. “Maya says you have a story. Something… biological. Extraordinary.”
“It’s not a story,” Chloe mumbled sleepily from the floor, not opening her eyes. “It’s a fact.”
Sloane’s gaze flicked to Chloe, then back to Amy. Her professional detachment was fraying, revealing a raw, hungry interest underneath. “Maya said… you change people. Is that true?”
Amy looked from Sloane’s piercing, skeptical eyes to Maya’s triumphant, expectant ones. The fear was a fading echo. In its place, a new certainty, cold and thrilling, took root. The story wasn’t hers to hide anymore. It was hers to tell. To show. Slowly, deliberately, she pushed herself up to sit fully upright on the rug, making no attempt to cover herself.
“It’s true,” Amy said, her voice stronger than she expected. She met Sloane’s gaze and held it, a challenge and an invitation. “Want to see?”
A brutal silence swallowed the room. The air conditioning clicked on with a dusty groan, the only sound. Sloane just stood there, blazer still buttoned, clutching a leather satchel to her chest like a shield. Her intelligent eyes were wide, calculating risks, cataloging data points: Chloe’s post-coatal sprawl, Maya’s predatory stillness, Amy’s defiant, exposed truth on the rug.
She blinked, a slow shutter-click of a reaction. “You’re serious.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an acknowledgment of shifted reality.
Amy didn’t move. “Dead serious.”
Sloane’s gaze finally dropped from Amy’s face, tracing a slow, deliberate path down her torso. The journey seemed to take an age. Her analytical expression dissolved pixel by pixel, replaced by something raw and unprofessional. Her breath hitched, a tiny, almost inaudible gasp. The satchel slipped from her fingers, hitting the floor with a soft thud.
“Oh, shit,” she breathed. The words weren’t fearful. They were reverent.
A tight, triumphant smile touched Maya’s lips. She unzipped her own borrowed jeans, shimmying them down her new hips in a smooth, practiced motion. She stepped out of the denim pool on the floor and moved behind Sloane, her body a warm, heavy press against the smaller woman’s back. Maya’s hands came up to slide the blazer from Sloane’s stiff shoulders.
“The body doesn’t lie,” Maya murmured into Sloane’s ear, her voice a hypnotic rasp. “All that theory, all those words you write… they’re just nervous systems waiting for a stronger signal. This is the signal.”
Sloane didn’t resist. She let the blazer fall. Her whole body was tense, a wire humming at a frequency only Amy could broadcast.
“Show her, Amy,” Chloe whispered from the floor, propping herself up on an elbow. Her voice was thick with sleep and ownership. “Give her the fact.”
Amy stood. The motion was slow, deliberate, a display of power rather than a functional act. She let the borrowed hoodie, which had been draped over her shoulders, slide down her arms to the rug. Her body was utterly revealed in the unforgiving afternoon light—the heavier muscle in her thighs and stomach, the startling, impossible thickness of her cock resting against her leg. It twitched, a lazy, autonomous pulse, under Sloane’s stunned stare.
Sloane took a wobbly step forward, her journalist’s detachment now fully incinerated. She knelt. Not in worship, not yet.In study. Her eyes were inches away. She could see the veined, heavy reality of it, the flushed head, the subtle, musky scent of Amy and Chloe that clung to the skin. Her hand, trembling, rose.
She didn’t touch Amy. She touched her own lower lip, her fingers exploring her own mouth as if it were suddenly alien to her.
“It’s… impossible,” Sloane whispered, but the wonder in her voice had already drowned the skepticism.
“Touch it,” Maya commanded softly from behind her. “Verify your source.”
Sloane’s fingertips, cool and dry, brushed the hot, silken skin of Amy’s shaft. The contact was electric.Amy gasped. A fresh surge of blood engorged her further, the tissue thickening, lengthening perceptibly in Sloane’s hesitant hand. It was a physiological reaction, a feedback loop triggered by the focused, intelligent attention.
“See?” Maya said, her hands sliding around Sloane’s waist, unbuttoning her simple black jeans. “It knows you.”
Sloane watched, transfixed, as her own grip was gently forced to tighten, to explore the immense, velvety girth. Her sharp, intellectual face was collapsing into soft, open-mouthed awe.
Chloe got up, moving with a liquid, boneless grace. She came to stand before Sloane, a living blueprint of the transformation. She cupped Sloane’s cheek, turning the woman’s face away from Amy’s cock to look into her own eyes. “You’re going to be so pretty,” Chloe whispered, her voice a sing-song promise. “Your smart little mouth is going to feel so good.”
Maya, now naked, pushed Sloane’s jeans and underwear down her thighs in one firm motion. She guided Sloane forward, off her knees, until she was bent at the waist over the arm of her own couch, her back arched, her intelligent face pressed into the cushion. Maya met Amy’s eyes over the curve of Sloane’s ass, a silent, giddy question. Amy nodded, a flush of dark, possessive heat flooding her.
This was different from Chloe. Chloe had been discovery. This was application. A deliberate act of rewriting.
Amy positioned herself behind Sloane. She didn’t enter her. Not there. She leaned forward, her substantial weight pressing Sloane deeper into the couch, and brought the fat, slick head of her cock to Sloane’s mouth, which was gasping into the fabric.
“Open,” Amy said. The word wasn’t harsh. It was inevitable.
Sloane opened her mouth, a obedient, reflexive parting of lips. Amy pushed in.Not hard. Just enough. The head stretched Sloane’s lips into a tight, pink ring. Sloane gagged instantly, a short, sharp sound of shock.
Amy held there. She felt the first pulse of the process leave her. It wasn’t just semen. It was a tingling, cellular command, a broadcast of biological instruction that traveled from her core, down the length of her shaft, and directly into Sloane’s body through the tender membranes of her mouth. Amy could feel it, a fizzy, pressurized release of something more than fluid.
Sloane shuddered violently beneath her. A muffled cry vibrated against Amy’s flesh. Amy pushed deeper, slowly, an inexorable penetration. Sloane’s body began to change in real-time.
It started in her face. The sharp, angular jawline began to soften, the bones subtly redistributing under the skin as Amy fucked into her mouth with slow, relentless strokes. Her cheekbones rounded. The tense lines of intellectual fatigue around her eyes smoothed away, replaced by a plump, poreless flush. Her lips, stretched obscenely wide, swelled beyond the mechanical need of the act, becoming a pair of lush, bee-stung pillows that glistened with spit and Amy’s pre-ejaculate.
Her hair, that chic silver-tipped cut, seemed to grow an inch, the strands turning a uniform, glossy platinum blonde from the roots out, as if dipped in liquid metal.
Amy watched it happen, stroke by stroke. The clever, skeptical light in Sloane’s eyes, visible in her profile, clouded over, then refocused with a new, simple purpose: to take. To accommodate. Her grunts of effort turned into low, grateful moans. Her body, previously thin and wiry, began to soften and curve. The definition in her shoulders blurred, melting into a sloping, feminine line. Her ass, pressed against Amy’s stomach, plumped and rounded, becoming a perfect, jiggling handful.
Beside them, Maya and Chloe moved together. Maya lowered Chloe onto the rug, facing her, and they melted into a deep, hungry kiss, their new, massive breasts mashing together. Maya then slid down, her nose buried between Chloe’s thighs, her tongue delving into the slick, transformed flesh that was still leaking Amy from earlier. Chloe, in turn, arched her back, her mouth finding Maya’s own wetness, her movements eager and synchronized. They were a perfect, self-sustaining circuit of pleasure and worship, a 69 of mutual devotion, their eyes closed in ecstatic concentration, their moans providing a wet, rhythmic soundtrack to Amy’s work on Sloane.
Sloane was barely recognisable now. Her face was a bimbo’s mask of blissful vacancy, her mouth a perfect, stretched O around Amy’s pistoning girth. She was pushing back against Amy, meeting each thrust, hungry for more of the transformative flood. Drool and thick fluid coated her chin, her new, soft throat working frantically.
Amy felt the final, cataclysmic release building. It was bigger than before, fueled by the act of creation itself. She pistoned her hips faster, the sound of her flesh slapping against Sloane’s ruined, beautiful face filling the apartment, syncopated with the wet sounds from Chloe and Maya.
“Take it all,” Amy growled, her voice strained with the force of what was coming.
She erupted.
The transformation fluid flooded Sloane’s throat. Sloane’s body seized, a long, full-body convulsion of orgasmic rewriting. Her breasts finally swelled under her, pushing against the couch cushions, huge and heavy. Her final, sharp-minded thought dissolved into a warm, white static of pure, submissive pleasure. She gulped, swallowed, took every drop.
Amy pulled out slowly. Sloane collapsed off the couch arm, boneless, onto the rug beside the intertwined forms of Maya and Chloe. She lay there, gasping, a perfect, empty-made creation. Her platinum hair fanned out. Her new, enormous chest rose and fell rapidly. A slow, dumb smile spread over her swollen, glossy lips.
Maya lifted her head from between Chloe’s thighs, breathing hard. She looked at the finished Sloane, then up at Amy, who stood over them all, glistening and powerful. Maya’s expression was one of profound, terrifying satisfaction.
“Now,” Maya panted, a bead of Chloe’s wetness on her chin. “We have a journalist.”