Piper picked up her tray of food and walked into the complex cafeteria. A lot of the employees were in the cafeteria eating right then. She noticed Amy sitting with Crawford. She decided to join them.
"How'd you sleep?" asked Amy.
"Uneasy," said Piper. "I'm still worried about Phoebe."
"The doctor says she appears to be improving," said Crawford. "The transfusion seems to be helping."
"I didn't get a chance to thank you," said Piper, "for helping her."
"No thanks necessary," said Crawford. "Glad I could be of help."
"Thanks all the same," said Piper.
"Seems a fair deal," said Crawford. "Your husband made my arm good as new."
"He's pretty good at that," said Piper."
"Amy has been telling me about him," said Crawford. "He's what they call a White Lighter? I never imagined anything like a White Lighter existed. Amy says they have their evil counterparts called Dark Lighters."
"Yes," said Piper. "They can be particularly nasty. We've encountered them before."
"Kind of makes sense, I guess," said Crawford. "These White Lighters heal the good people. It only makes sense that the bad guys would have someone who can heal them."
"No, Dark Lighters can't heal," said Amy. "Only White Lighters have that ability."
"Really?" questioned Crawford. "So does that mean these White Lighters heal evil people, too?"
"I guess it could happen," said Piper. "Not as a rule, though. But I guess under some special circumstances a White Lighter might have healed someone evil before."
"I can't think of any circumstances where one of these White Lighters might heal a demon," said Crawford. "They seem to be mortal enemies."
"It doesn't work that way," said Piper. "A White Lighters healing doesn't work on demons. I guess that's why they spliced White Lighter DNA into the demon DNA. They could change the coding to allow the healing to work on the demonic DNA."
"That's not what it looks like," said Crawford. "My dad is a geneticist. He was really ticked when I decided not to follow in his footsteps, I can tell you. But I did learn enough from him to know that it doesn't seem they spliced White Lighter DNA into the demonic DNA."
"What do you mean?" asked Piper.
"Well, if they had spliced the DNA together," said Crawford, "after this length of time the DNAs would have become inextricably intertwined. It wouldn't be possible to tell where the demonic DNA ended and the White Lighter DNA started."
"So how did they get the White Lighter DNA into the mix?" asked Amy.
"Most likely," said Crawford, "they used one of these White Lighters as a host. Injected him with the modified DNA and then sealed him up until the new genetic code took over. That would have been the easiest way back then. Genetic engineering was really primitive in those days."
"So how is the demon healing itself?" asked Piper. "If they didn't splice the White Lighter DNA with the demonic DNA, the White Lighter part of the demon shouldn't be regenerating any of the demonic DNA. It wouldn't work."
"Can't answer that one," said Crawford. "I'm not an expert on demonic DNA."
"No, but I know someone who is," said Amy. "Come on. We need to talk to Marcus and the doctor right now."