After some time, David was back floating in the dark world. At this point, the darkness was completely empty. Remembering his previous experience, David began to focus his mental energies in order to draw out the orbs.

Several orbs starting appearing as David focused his intent. This time not as many orbs were present. Based on the last experience, David had made a few assumptions about this dark dreamscape. Each of the orbs seemed to represent the dreams of a person. People that are awake wouldn't appear, but those that are asleep were present in this dreamscape as a floating orb.

With this basis of thought, David decided to move forward to investigate the situation some more. With his will, he began floating closer to the nearest orb.

As he approached the orb, he was very careful not to accidentally touch it like last time. As he neared the orb, David felt a familiar feeling but wasn't quite sure what was causing this feeling. Why did this orb feel so familiar? David stopped moving near the orb and focused more intently on the ball of light.

As if his focus brought him into another world, David began to see a scene in front of him. It was like he ducked his head in a pool of water and was looking at the depths below. Karine was playing in a yard with her sister, Sonia. The two looked to be about 10 to 12 years old. They were really enjoying themselves. A pretty woman came walking up to two girls.

"That must be their mom," David thought to himself seeing a woman that looked very similar to the adult Karine.

This scene seemed like a really wonderful dream. David was inside the dream this time. It was more like he was watching a movie. David also realized this wasn't a nightmare. People have good dreams too.

With a sigh, David pulled his focus back from the orb. By his guess, he must be back in the Carmine's house. Karine had probably dozed off beside the bed just like last time. That meant that he was still alive and he was being cared for well.

With his physical status no longer in question, David began looking around more clearly. He could see about thirty other orbs floating off in the dark space. David started to go from dream to dream to see what was going on.

Two of the nearby orbs were guards that David had met. One was dreaming about a dinner with his family while the other was embattled in a large war. David found it interesting that the dreams had so much contrast.

One of the sleeping nurses dreams was really inappropriate. She was in some fantasy where both men and women creatures of all sorts were performing all kinds of weird sexual acts on each other. After watching a while, David had to pull himself away from the dream and shake his head.

"Those nurses sure are pretty wild," David thought while still shaking the lust-filled sights of the dream from his head, "I could always tell they were not quite right."

He bounced from dream to dream checking out what everyone had in their thoughts while they slept. After being a voyeur in 10 dreams, he stumbled across an orb with a very familiar feeling.

"Atkins," David thought before focusing on on the orb.

In his dream, Atkins was in a room bound to a metal chair with chains. When David saw Atkins' pitiful appearance, he couldn't keep himself from smiling. This man had tried to kill David twice. He had tried to kidnap Karine. David's hate for this man was pretty intense.

Since he wouldn't care if he accidentally hurt Atkins, David decided it was time to test his ability in this dream world. He reached out and touched the orb with his hand.

He appeared in the dark room behind Atkins. This was just the way David wanted it. Given the wrongs against him...when he had full control over the situation...David's cruel side really came out. He was going to push the limits of what he could do in a dream.

Even though Atkins was bound to the chair, he could still speak.

"Who's there?", Atkins asked when he heard the noise of feet behind him.

David didn't respond, but continued shuffling his feet to let Atkins know something was behind him. The lack of response was for two reasons: David wanted to scare to the point he died and David was stuck trying to figure out how to do just that.

He was just standing in the room with Atkins strapped to a chair. He needed some tools if he wanted to torture him. David had made stuff appear in his dreams before and he bet that it would work now. At David's whim, the dark room lit up with bright light and a table full of grisly tools of torture appeared on a table sitting in front of Atkins.

David has an idea. After a few minutes of making noise behind Atkins, he revealed himself in front of the man.

"David Knox? You shouldn't be messing with me. You have no idea the trouble the people behind me can cause," Atkins said in a threatening manner.

David didn't even acknowledge the threat. David looked up at the man menacingly and smiled, then he proceeded to walk over to the table and play with the tools. Anticipation is a key component to fear and David knew this very well.

"Hey trash, what do you think you can do to me? Your just some trash human that doesn't know his place. When I get out of these chains.."

Before he could finish his sentence, David spun around and rammed a metal spike into the top of Atkins' right knee. Atkins howled in pain as David turned around to work at the table like nothing happened.

David was busy working at the table to arrange his tools of torture. He needed to check to see just what the dream world would allow. At first, he didn't want to go too far in fear that Atkins would wake up and the opportunity would be gone. Reasoning with himself that he had to do something instead of just standing there, he decided to take action with the metal spike. The metal spike was actually a test by David. If that spike would have woke up Atkins, then there was no point going forward. If it didn't wake him up, then he knew a limit to the pain he could use without waking Atkins up.

His next test was to see if Atkins could be healed or if the blood flow from wounds could be stopped. He could not mentally heal Atkins in the dream. He could however burn wounds shut with a hot iron he conjured in the dream.

David had also tried something else that worked surprising well with his test subject. He could leave the dream and go back to the dark space. When he returned, it was like the dream had started over but with some changes. The changes usually depended on how bad Atkins was injured before he exited the dream. It was like some of the damage to Atkins was healed when David came in and out of the dream; however, Atkins seemed to pay some price for the healing. He was also aware that David left and came back even though the dream sort of reset.

At this time, David had tortured Atkins several times and left to reset the dream. The oddest thing occurred to David when leaving a dream. David had noticed that whatever strength Atkins lost, David seemed to gain. It was like Atkins mental strength was being whittled down the more he was scared in the nightmare. That mental strength seemed to transfer to David every time he tormented Atkins. The benefits to David were that he didn't feel weak when changing dreams like before.

To Atkins' misfortune, David's whole mindset during the torture had changed from being vengeful to inquisitive. He didn't even treat Atkins as a person anymore as he abused the man to test his theories about this dream world. David was probably ten times crueler to Atkins because of the his mind shift. And David was actually having fun with the whole thing. He liked experimenting and this dream ended up being one big experiment.

Eventually, David started to get bored with it after he couldn't learn much more information from testing on Atkins. He had learned a ton of things.

Coupled with his past experiences, David knew that he could affect people in real life through their dreams. He had the ability to enter or watch peoples' dreams if they were nearby. When he terrorized someone in a dream, he would gain something from their terror that made him feel good and mentally stronger. He had most of his usual dream abilities in this state and could edit freely ad long as he had mental strength.

Finally, he decided to push Atkins treatment to the maximum level to see if he could wake him up. One scare that always worked well in a dream was an unexpected attack or pain at the point when you start to feel safe. David thought hard about how to achieve this and finally figured out a good way.

David appeared behind Atkins in the dream world and sat down to focus his full concentration on this task. After a while of heavy manipulation that burned most of David's mental energy, the nightmare's arrangements were completed. David hid himself in a dark corner of the room and had Atkins chains fall loose so that he could freely move. Feeling his new freedom in this torturous room, Atkins stood up and began moving toward the door. David could see the look of happiness on Atkins' face. He must have thought he was going to escape. Atkins turned the door knob and the door cracked open. However, as Atkins tried to pull his hand away from the doorknob, he could not take his hand back. A mechanism came out of the door and grabbed Atkins by the forearm and yanked him into the air. His arm came loose from his body from the strength of the pull and Atkins body tumbled down into a spiked pit on the other side of the door.

As Atkins' nightmare started to fade, all David could do is say, "That's what you get for ripping my arm off you bastard."