Thumbing through the hard canvassed covers of antiquey books, Anna scanned the title's evaluatatively. Her brother had long wandered off, down another row of the tall and overflowing shelves. The musty smell and dusty lights of the antique store amplified the slow footsteps and creaking floorboards. Anna liked drifting away in the human's version of silence.

Her finger trailed over a stack of book bindings, and paused atop one in particular. The author and his title gleamed out of an aged cover and her heart leapt. Who would have thought she would've found such a gem on her first visit to a real New York bookstore. She opened her mouth to call out for Chad- when a hearty male hand skidded across her shell. Her jacketed shell. She pitched forward, into the stack of books, and was rewarded by a cackling laugh.

"Nice goin', shellback," An unfamiliar voice gibed behind her. "With moves like those it's wonder you haven't been made a soup yet." The books crumbled before her, and she clutched at shelves to catch herself. They all bowed, the planks and their books slid down and fell upon her. Hitting the ground with an oof' a few remaining books landed on her shell. More laughing by the strange man.

"Ho my god!" Anna gasped, huffing for air as she pushed herself up from the ever shifting pile of books. The whispered voices of the shop had frozen, and footsteps were hurrying to the location of her crash. She was going to be stripped down and photographed and taken to prison where they were beat her. Through the downy sleeve, she felt the man wrap his meaty paw around her arm. She was lifted back up effortlessly, turned around to face his broad chest of intimidation. He waited as she raised her eyes to his, looking at the underside of his jaw, and up his nose, between where his brown-black eyes stared down at her. People were coming in from all sides, some still holding their own antique trinkets.

"Are you all right?"

"What fell?"

"Did you fall?"

"Is anyone hurt?"

"Woah!" The man threw his hand back. His eyes widened, turning a shade browner. The color of his shaggy hair. "Jeez!"

"Annie!" Chad was there. He charged through the by-standers, and pushed himself in between Anna and the man.

"Woah, guy. Hold up!" The man said, as Chad ordered her to leave.

"Anna, get outta here!" She didn't have to be told twice. Stumbling over a few books underfoot, she made it for the door, pushing away the hands that came to tear away her disguise. On the point of hysterics, she burst out of the shop. And as if she was back in the forest, she broke into a sprint away from the lights.

It was late in the day. Cars engines thundered down the street. Undeterred by the snow and its ice, they rushed along and hurried through the yellow lights. Anna bolted down an alley, finding refuge behind a set of trash cans. Hunkering down in the smelly cove, she wrapped her arms around her knees. A few moments later the sound of running footsteps came towards her. A single set. Anna looked around the shield of plastic to see Chad run past.

"Chad!" She called, crawling out a bit. He skidded to a stop and then ran into the alley. Blood was pouring from his face, and he held the palm of his hand to the underside his nose. Red was beginning to dribble onto his shirt.

"Come on!" He grabbed the shoulder of her coat with his other hand, and hoisted her back out to the street. "Taxi!" He let go of her and waved at the brown car driving by. It slowed and coasted to the curb and Chad took Anna's hand and pushed her to it. "Get in!"

"Oh my god! Do you need to go to the hospital?" She asked as Chad piled into the cab after her.

"No, we're getting out of here." He said, slamming the door behind him, and pressing the sleeve of his coat against his running nose. "Shit. Get us over the bridge!" He directed to the driver who was gawking at him from the rear view mirror. Once the car started off, Anna turned around in her seat, setting her hands on the back of her leather cushion. The big man from the shop was just coming out the door, squinting after the car. "Broke my freakin' nose." Chad said beneath his sleeve.

"No no no. And again, no." The side of his face was beginning to swell. With his head laying over the back of his couch, Chad rested a bag of frozen chicken stir-fry over his eye. Out of the other side he saw his sister pouting and puppy dog eyeing him. "No."

"Oh, come on. I'll be in and out and they won't even see me." Anna sat down beside him, displacing the pile of dried bloody tissues onto the floor of his neat clean apartment. "It was a Vonnegut first printing! Do you know how hard it is to find one of those?!"

"I know that you don't."

"And since I tipped all those books over, someone may have noticed it! We have to get it before someone else finds it!" She shook his thigh, as shaking his arm would've caused a good deal of trauma to his face.

"Annie, no. It's way to dangerous. The place is probably crawling with cops and special forces by now." Chad lifted his leg up onto the couch, out of her grasp. "You're lucky that I'm not telling mom and dad about this."

"We'll just drive by then, and see if anyone is there. It's open till nine on Saturdays! It's probably still open!"

"Why do you even want to go back there? You know what was going to happen." He removed the freezer bag gently, and touched the swell around his eye with the pads of his fingers. "Mmmrgh... shit."

"But it didn't." Anna took the bag from him, which was now beginning to drip. "I'm not going to let one scare ruin my time here. You said yourself, people here see weird shit all the time! They probably won't even remember I was there." Chad groaned. "I bet that there's another mutant in there already, making another mess."

"NO. And that's final." He took the bag back, getting off the couch and disappearing into the kitchen.

10 Minutes Later.

Anna glanced over her shoulder as the maroon taxi cab drove off down the sanded street. She should've asked for them to wait for her, but that was all right. Catching another cab wouldn't be hard. New York was the city that didn't sleep, so taxis would be around all night.

Taking a deep breath of the chill air, Anna turned her sights to the lighted store front. A fluorescent sign glowed open' through the frost of the window. Buttoning and rebuttoning her coat, Anna summoned the strength and bravado to enter the shop.

Chad had retired to his room and TV, presumably for the night. Since he had a plum view of the front door from the comfort of his bed, he could know if Anna snuck in or out while he was nursing his wounds. He had a fist like a bear. It's lucky my nose isn't broken.' But Chad had no vantage point on the bathroom window. He may get suspicious after a half an hour passes and the shower would still be running. And also if she emerges from her shower with a coat over her arm. As long as she could climb back up the drain pipe to get to his third floor apartment. It was like a really smooth young tree. She could probably make it... probably.

It was eight fifty-five. Swallowing back fear, Anna slinked through the front door. A bell twinkled above her head, drawing unneeded attention to her. No one was nearby, and it seemed as if she had entered unnoticed.

She could smell the danger. There were humans around, and Chad was at least two miles away. They would recognize her in an instance. That just meant she had to be quick, because she could see the stack of books at the far end of the isle before her. If there just weren't all the stupid lights on. Her book was so close.

Making her way down the isle quickly and efficiently, Anna took note of every stray movement that caught her eye through the tops of each bookshelf. It was notablely quieter than the afternoon. Except for the pounding of her heart. She couldn't remember ever being this anxious or excited.

The books had been stacked up again, out of the order she had found them in. She skimmed the titles. What she was looking for was already fresh in her mind, so she didn't need to look twice at most books. Her fingers twiddled nervously on their way down the stack.

And there it was. Player Piano. It had remained unnoticed, and was still thrown into the stack of bargain books. Anna surpressed the urge to scream. She hurried in pulling it out of it's booky sandwich, watching that the rest of the stack didn't tip over in the process. Standing back up, she smelled it deep, she felt the smooth paper cover against her beak, she almost didn't notice the boy standing across from her.

"Hi." He said softly. Anna's eyes snapped off the book cover, into the face of a stranger. She shrieked. He shrieked. She through whatever was in her hand at him. Not the book of course, but the five dollar bill she had brought. With that, she was out the door. The book stack fell over again. "Hey, wait!"

The door clatter closed, but she didn't stop to see. She was already squeezing through a pair of parked cars, setting off an alarm. Anna screamed again, and tore across the icy street. Her traction was better than a car that was passing, and in turning to avoid her, it began twisting out of control. Wheels squealed as the brakes locked them into place, and there was a crash as Anna jumped the snow bank to the next sidewalk. At last she found a place without lights. And even though she could see two men in the poor light of the alley, it seemed a safe place, and she ran in.