David struggled to keep his eyes open sitting at his new cubicle at the design firm's office. Last night's events had left him at a loss. Honestly, he didn't know how to feel. His upbringing and morals had him wanting to feel guilty for what happened to the man. But another side of him couldn't help but wonder if he could do it again. A contest between morals and curiosity was currently taking place in David's mind.

The new situation at work had not helped the issue. While the company had promised the Carmine family that the would hold his job for him, they still went ahead and hired someone to replace him. They also moved his stuff out of his office to a cubicle in the common area.

When he showed up that Friday morning, half of the staff looked like they had seen a ghost.

"Guess most of them didn't expect me to wake up," David thought to himself after seeing their faces. He didn't blame his coworkers or his company though. He was gone for five months. What were they supposed to do?

Although a lot of stuff had changed at work, David's main issue right now was adjusting to his new new "super sense", as he called it, in the high traffic office environment. Even though he wasn't focusing, he kept feeling the movement of all the people around him with his super sense. It was like he was sitting at a desk in the middle of a highway. It was hard to concentrate with all the commotion around him. Between that issue and the weight of what happened last night sitting on his thoughts, David got hardly any work done all day.

The work environment started to get better after lunch as some of his coworkers began skipping out early for the weekend ahead. The fewer amount of people walking around helped a bit and David started to get engrossed into his work. Before he knew it, David was the last one in the office.

"Seems like stuff really doesn't change," David thought to himself as he started packing up his stuff for the walk back home. He needed to get home too. He still had a lot of things to sort over in his mind.

Although everything seemed to turn out okay physically, the entire experience had been mentally tough on David. Worry about this magical world that seemed to exist in the shadows, worry about adjusting back to a real life, worry about his relationship with Karine, worry about his new abilities that even seem to put people in the hospital. He had so many worries and no tools to really resolve those fears.

Before long, David had started to get near his apartment building. Looking up to see the front entrance of the building, he felt a shiver pass through him as he walked forward.

"Mirror," was David's thought as a feeling of threat hit him quickly.

With his extra sense, he could feel that something was moving toward him rapidly.Someone was attacking him from behind. The skills that he had managed to pick up in the party dream came into full effect as he dove forward and rolled to the side.

Spinning around as he popped out of the roll, David looked up to see his attacker. The bulky man looked a little disorderly wearing some beat up looking clothes.

"Atkins," David said out loud as he saw the man.

Hearing David call his name, Atkins looked up with a grin on his face, "David Knox."

"I have been waiting for you for a while. I figured if I waited around you and the design firm I might have a chance to see Karine out of her mansion."

"After waiting so long, I couldn't help myself from coming after you when I saw you walking alone tonight. I have been wanting to pay you back for that knife in my armpit for some time. The area still hurts a bit even now."

While Atkins was talking, David was running though plans in his head. His right hand slowly creeped into his pocket to grab the ink pen that he had been carrying with him all day. With a push of his thumb, the cap was off the pen exposing the pointy tip.

"You’re gonna die tonight, David Knox." oAtkins continued to talk on and on.

"Will you just shut up. I'm tired of all this talking. Just freaking attack you fool," David said to Atkins in a mocking manner.

Atkins instantly went into a rage.

"Good," David thought, "He makes errors when he is pissed off." He knew Atkins habits after fighting him so many times in the dreamworld.

Atkins was now charging forward. David had already readied himself while pulling the hidden pen out of his pocket and waiting for a chance to attack.

Atkins reaches forward to grab David. "Looks like he is going for the kill right away," David thought to himself, "I must have really pissed him off."

In the next second, David rammed the ink pen straight up into the open palm of Atkins' grabbing hand.

With a yell in pain, Atkins pulled away moving off to the side as the ink pen impales his hand. David wasn't wasting any time. He rolled away from Atkins while scraping his right hand in the curb gutter at the edge of the sidewalk. His intent was to grab a handful of grit and sand that builds up in the street gutters in most places in the city. Sure enough, he felt some perfect sandy grit in his grasp as his hand drug the ground.

As Atkins was recovering from the pen stab, David was already gearing up for the next exchange in the fight.

Atkins reaches behind his back and pulled out a large dagger style knife. David didn't expect this change since Atkins never had a weapon in their dreamworld fights. Regardless, it wasn't like David had never fought someone who had a knife before. He had had countless knife fights with the Carmine's guards in his dreamworld. He knew ways to deal with an armed opponent.

Atkins came forward twirling the knife in his hand threateningly, "I owe you two stabs."

As he charged over again, David understood that there was no way he was getting out of this exchange unharmed. "If you can't dodge, mitigate the damage," David went through his lessons learned in previous battles.

As Atkins stabbed toward David's chest from underneath, David moved his body to take the hit in the left shoulder. "Away from the heart. Try to make the knife hit bone so it gets stuck. Disarm him with the knife. Hit him with the sand in the eyes," David ran through the whole plan rapidly in his mind as he moved.

The knife directly hit David in the left shoulder. He could feel the knife scraping bone as he moved his right hand to fling the grit in Atkins' face.

Thinking that David was trying to throw a punch, Atkins moved his arm to block the blow. At his block made contact with David's forearm, David opened his hand to fling the sandy grit into Atkins' face.

Direct hit. Atkins stumbles back to wipe at his eyes.

David was overjoyed. The plan worked. Just as he was celebrating to himself, David felt a liquid run down his arm and into his hand.

"Damn," David said out loud as he looked up at Atkins. The big man was still stumbling around but in his grasp was the dagger. He didn't release it as David expected. Now David was left with an unplugged hole in his shoulder that was rapidly spewing blood.

Reaching up and ramming his thumb into the wound, David was trying to plug up his leak.

As he was standing there watching Atkins struggle with his newly found blindness, David kept trying to formulate his next plan. His blood loss was pretty bad already he probably only had another minute before he passed out. He was unarmed and Atkins has a weapon. His only option was to attack now while Atkins was still disoriented and he still had some strength left.

As David stepped forward getting ready to attack, he felt a cracking sensation as the mirror seemed to have broken.

All of a sudden, they were surrounded by three people. Karine's bodyguards. David recognizes them right away.

Seeing Atkins stumbling around, the guards charged directly at him. As the guards were trying to subdue Atkins, David was having problems of his own. He was still losing blood. Knowing he was going to pass out shortly, David unplugged his thumb from his shoulder and opened up his backpack. He pulled out a packet of tissues and stuffed them into his wound and sat down on the steps of the building next to his apartment. "Blood loss has slowed. Sitting down so I don't bust my head when I fall. Hopefully those guards take good care of me like last time," David thought as he sat there watching the guards finally get Atkins under control.

Just as he could feel himself passing out, David couldn't keep himself from chuckling, "Crazy shit always seems to be happening to me lately."