It was after his father had been put in jail for using his Snatching ability to rob an interstellar bank and his mother—who was a female from Tranq Prime—had decided to move off-planet for a fresh start. She had found the school for Chain after much searching and had been assured that they accepted all kinds of Kindred children—even M-Switch ones.
At first Chain had been happy. There were many different kinds of Kindred children there—Beast Kindred, Blood Kindred, Wulven Kindred—even one Touch Kindred, though it was rare for them to live away from their home world. It seemed like everyone fit in and got along, despite their differences.
Chain had been only about seven or eight cycles old—unsure of himself, but eager to make friends. But this was before he could quite control his ability to switch bodies with other males. And—quite by accident—he had unfortunately slipped into the body of a Beast Kindred several years older than him and much larger.
He hadn’t meant to—it had been a complete accident. The other boy had been doing a presentation on planetary orbits—using a special light model he had built himself with a holographic projector. The presentation was so interesting and the model was so engrossing that Chain had found himself wishing he could operate the projector himself.
He watched the older boy’s hands on the controller as the holo-planets whizzed by in the air above their heads. They were so beautiful—so lifelike. He wished with all his might that he could play with that projector and control the planets just once…
And suddenly, he had been. He had looked down at his hands—which were suddenly bigger and with darker skin than he’d had before—and watched in amazement as he saw himself operating the apparatus that ran the model.
“I’m doing it!” he thought with excitement. “Look—I’m doing it!”
“No, you’re not—I am! Or I was. What’s going on—who are you? What are you doing in my head?”
The deep, menacing mental voice was definitely not his own, Chain realized. He dragged his eyes from the planetary light model and saw himself—or his body anyway—still slumped in his desk at the back of the room. His eyes were rolled up in his head and he was barely breathing.
Students around him were beginning to notice what had happened and they were pointing at Chain’s body and shouting and waving at the teacher.
“Look, look! Chain’s sick!”
“No, he’s dead!”
“I don’t think he’s breathing!”
There were screams and shouts filling the classroom and at the same time, the boy whose body he had accidentally snatched was shouting at him to “Get out of my head!”
The moment he fully understood what had happened, Chain felt his consciousness fly back to his own body. He sat up with a jerk at the same time the boy giving the presentation lost his own balance and fell over. When he got back up, he was shouting and pointing at Chain.
“He did it! He was in me! That dirty Snatcher stole my body! He snatched me and wouldn’t get out!”
The class erupted into pandemonium and the teacher couldn’t get control restored for half an hour. And by that time, everyone in the class understood what had happened—they all knew that Chain had snatched the Beast Kindred’s body with no warning or permission.
Not that anyone in their right mind would give you permission to snatch their body, Chain thought grimly, as he remembered the awful incident. It wasn’t pleasant to no longer be in control of your own physical actions and reactions.
He had tried to explain that it had all been an accident—a mistake—but it was too late. He had been able to blend in with the rest of the class up until then and the rest of the students treated him kindly. But from that day forward, he was picked on and bullied mercilessly. The other boys called him a “dirty Snatcher” and regularly pounced on him and beat him to a pulp after school.
It got so bad that Chain started skipping class, telling his mother he was going while he actually went and hung around the town, looking for distractions instead. He found plenty of them—none of them legal, however. At age sixteen, he snatched the wrong person—an elected official who was far up on the Twin Moons political food chain. He’d only done it as a joke, but when he gave the male’s body back, the repercussions were swift and terrible.
Chain had barely escaped from Twin Moons with his life and he’d been on his own ever since, though he made sure to keep in touch with his mother, whom he loved dearly, until she had died when he was only twenty cycles old.
After that, he’d been alone in the universe. He made a name for himself as a kind of master thief—someone who could procure items no one else could. He got quite wealthy and had a lovely domicile on a little planet in the Alpha Centauri system.
Chain didn’t really have to steal or Snatch anymore—he was indecently wealthy and could do what he wanted. Mostly he only worked to keep his skills sharp and have fun. That was the only reason he’d taken the current mission to recover both parts of the T’lix-Kruthe—because it was a challenge. He didn’t have much use for the fee he was going to receive once he returned the artifact to Commander Sylvan on the Mother Ship.
But no matter how much property he owned or how much credit he had, there was one thing missing from his life—a bride to share it with.
Chain had met a lot of pretty girls but that was what they were, girls. None of them was mature enough to tempt him to
