Thanks for the reviews everyone! :)

The thing was like some brilliant white light which seemed to ebb and flow before me. It wasn't exactly the kind of thing I envisioned as a spirit or ghost, but as my eyes peered at it I was almost convinced the entity was indeed some crazy witchcraft invoked specter.

The sheer intensity of the apparition was almost blinding after awhile, and its pallid iridescence intoxicated me. Instead of obeying Clark, I couldn't resist walking towards it.

"Lois! NO!" Kent was screaming desperately at me as if somehow he knew what my fate would be, but I was helplessly entrapped by some strange force invading my mind.

I ignored Kent, feeling suddenly annoyed at his whining, and the malevolent thoughts I had were abruptly not my own. My left hand outstretched through the brightness, touching the cave wall before me with a kind of loving caress. Except now, the wall wasn't a wall- at least not the solid stone surface my tactile senses had anticipated.

There was something more there- something too specifically formed and perfectly smooth to be a natural occurrence. The part of me that was still Lois unexpectedly had a feeling of fear, but not from anything supernatural. It was too late for me to matter though, because I was no longer able to control my own actions.

"Lois!" Clark pleaded one last time, but my back was to him.

I had a new agenda, a new mission…

The smooth shape on the rock face seemed to move beneath my palm, and I had expected it to, even though I knew that it was impossibility. More light came then, and something happened that I or rather the thing that had control of me, wasn't expecting.

The white aura around me flashed with a flare of electricity, and a blast of red heat seared through the strange light straight into the wall just inches from my hand. At the time I had no clue what had caused the phenomenon, but it shook me from my reverie. The ray had of course come from Clark's heat vision, and had he not intervened we may well both be dead today.

Another blast came then, only now the fiery, yellow beam was being emitted from where my palm had been seconds ago.

I whirled around just as the shaft of energy hit its intended target. Clark was dragged upwards from his seated position and slammed harshly against a low section of ceiling. It had no smooth sections like the wall I had touched, and I winced as I almost felt the pain for him as his back was rammed onto the spiky rock shelf.

I wanted to call his name as he had mine, but the moisture from my mouth and throat was gone- taken by the sheer terror of our situation. A croak was all I managed.

Clark looked down on me from his bizarre almost crucified-like pose with eyes that held more than fear. It was as if the thing that held him was squeezing him harder and harder into the granite wall. From his position I guessed he couldn't move to defend himself, and his features began to contort as if he was struggling with the effects of extreme G-force.

I ran underneath where he was pinned, carefully avoiding the beam that held him aloft. What I had intended to do I guess I'll never know, but at least I was making the effort rather than being some zombie, like only moments earlier.

"Clark…" He couldn't answer me, but whispering his name somehow made me more confident.

Bright red blood dribbled on me in a fresh surge from Clark's leg wound, and as I watched I realized in horror that it was being driven out by the pressure his body was under.

Temper hit me then. No, not temper, white-hot untapped fury! I remember thinking how my dad would have reacted, and words he often told me poured back into my incensed consciousness. I'm afraid of no man, Lois. Remember that. And you should never be either! Well, dad was a soldier, he was paid to be fearless, and the being I was facing was definitely 'no man', although I doubt dear daddy meant the latter in quite the same context as what I was confronted with.

It didn't matter, my gall had been brought to the fore and I was on the warpath. I wiped the blood from where it had splashed on my cheek, and then spun back to challenge whatever was emitting the hellish golden beam. I wasn't going to let it kill Clark without a fight, and heck, this thing wasn't getting into my brain in any kind of hurry again either.

Of course, I had no idea how it had invaded my thoughts in the first place, but a vivid memory of an insult I'd made to Clark gave me hope. I'd compared plaid boy to the mind reading/controlling alien kids of Midwich. Well in that movie the dude had focused his mind on a brick wall and didn't let his thoughts out to the enemy, maybe that would work for me too?

"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to mess with a Lane!" I yelled my war cry like a banshee and charged towards the wall at full throttle, focusing my mind and anger on what was being done to Clark behind me, and attempting to shut the entity out of my thought processes.

The insane tactic appeared to work for about two seconds. Okay, so maybe half a second! Then, Clark howled in agony, and its evil decoy plan worked. In my concern for Kent, I dropped my guard and soon paid the price.

The presence was there in my head again, and I didn't even have chance to see what had happened to Clark. I grasped my skull, wanting to tear the phantom from my brain. I fought it every step of the way until the entity grew tired of my petty earthly struggling.

It picked me up then, just as it had Clark, only now it was even more irate at my meddling. The cave wall was not an enticing place, but it was where I soon found myself, and now I too knew how Clark had felt only minutes ago. It wasn't a pleasant sensation.

The thing didn't just hold me there, though. It brought me away from the wall and then slammed me back against it several times in quick unison. It was kind of like being used as a punch bag by Mike Tyson, and Tyson was wearing granite gloves!

When the pounding stopped I was barely conscious, but then 'It' had kept me that way on purpose. Looking back, I guess it had done much the same with Clark. We had a few lessons to learn yet, and I just knew I wasn't going to like the teacher…

I was sprawled out on the ground, blinking as my blurred vision tried to adjust and come into focus. Where was Clark? What had it done to him? Why hadn't it killed me? Thoughts that at least were my own were scrambled and a jumbled up mess in my cortex. I gulped, tasting grit mixed with blood from when I'd landed for the second time in one day on the cave floor.

I risked moving my head to look up, and was rewarded with an image of Clark lying on his back. His eyes were closed, and he didn't respond when I softly called his name. I wanted to do more, to crawl over to him even, but my body felt like it was cemented to the stone beneath me.

Clark's jeans leg was now soaked red with his own blood, but looking back, he had thankfully landed far enough away from the meteor rocks to be reasonably unscathed from their effects.

"Kal-El…" A strong, unwavering voice resonated through the cavern. It reminded me of an old English professor who'd taught me- or rather tried to. He'd been an ass, just like this thing.

The light was back now, and it was bathing Clark and me in its eerie glow. I tried to shield my eyes, but I didn't even have the strength, so instead I simply waited for its next malicious move. I guessed wrongly as usual that it was speaking in some Kawatche language or tongue, and never once did it occur to me that it was addressing Kent. When there was no initial response to its ramblings, some of the words became discernable as English.

"Kal-El, you must complete your destiny, you must finish the crusade."

This time I understood the message. "I don't know who the heck you're talking to, but it's not me!" I muttered sarcastically and then rolled onto my side, daring to look at the light source.

When Clark had hit it with his heat vision, he had done enough damage to reveal something that shocked me. Remember, back then I didn't know Clark had caused it though, so I was even more mystified.

Inset in the wall that I had so tenderly stroked moments before was something man made. Okay, so maybe not man made, but certainly mechanical in origin. It reminded me of all the mainframes I'd seen when dad had taken me a tour of some Cheyenne Mountain facility years ago. Of course, this thing appeared more complex, but I recognized a souped up computer when I saw one. Were we getting our butts kicked by some central processing unit?

My first insane idea was that it was all connected to my father. After all, even after Chloe had been proven very much alive, he hadn't been in any hurry to get away from the local base. Was there always some secret agenda? Was this some secret military facility we'd stumbled on? The CIA type guards made it look that way, or was I being paranoid?

"You will obey me!"

"The hell I will!" I may have sounded like John Wayne at that point, but I didn't care. Spirits and witches might not be fightable, but a smart ass piece of metal was NOT getting the better of me.

I know adrenalin was Clark's favorite excuse, but at that point I think it was the only thing keeping me going. Not that my impudence got me anything other than another 'lesson' in manners.

"Kal-El will fulfill that which is foretold. Interference will not be tolerated!"

The commanding voice had taken a real dislike to me, I could tell that with its next action. I was picked up again, but not by my torso like my last encounter. Oh no, now I was getting the full treatment. It was like some golden lasso circling my neck and squeezing with some intense electrifying energy bolt. Later, I was to discover I had not been the first to undergo this wonderfully painful treatment, but I was glad to be the last.

My hands grabbed at its edges, but were repelled away. I was dying and there was nothing and no one to save me.

"You are not part of Kal-El's destiny…"

Oh yeah? Well that was as much as that smart alec knew, wasn't it?

Still, smart or not the darn thing was killing me. Every breath was like sucking in mere microscopic amounts of air because my windpipe was being put under such immense pressure. I heard my own wheezing noises and then silence as my world began to tumble into a kaleidoscope of grey hues.