Holly put down her coffee and took the power seat at the head of the conference table. This is it. My chance to blow Pam and the rest of them away with a full set of results. All ready for publication. And all mine.

The other members of the lab were already there, just waiting for Pam to arrive and start the meeting. George was sitting three chairs down on Holly’s right, looking like a lumberjack in a red flannel shirt. The idiot, he has no idea what’s coming. And Francisco and Janet next to each other on the opposite side of the table, wearing matching New England Patriots sweatshirts. Couldn’t be more clueless if they tried.

Pam came in at 9:58, carrying a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. “Morning everyone,” she said. “Guess my asking for a special lab meeting got your attention.”

“Sure did,” George replied. “And you even have donuts—must be a real celebration.”

Pam put the box down in front of him and took her usual seat next to the head of the table, on Holly’s right. George grabbed a jelly donut before passing the box across to Francisco.

“You’ll soon find out,” Pam said. “Holly, why don’t you go ahead and let these guys see what you’ve been up to. Folks, let me tell you that you’ll seldom if ever hear anything this exciting again.”

Holly struggled to keep a smug look off her face. “Well, as you all know, George and I have been screening the Langmere chemical library, more than a hundred thousand compounds, hoping we could find a drug that blocks Alzheimer’s plaque formation.”

“It’s amazing you can test that many chemicals,” Janet interrupted.

“That was the big problem we had at the beginning,” George jumped in. “It took a long time for me to get the screening system set up, but now we can work through a thousand compounds a week. Between the two of us, we’ve screened nearly sixty thousand so far.”

“And now we can stop.” Holly dropped her bombshell. “I’ve got one that works!”

George had taken a bite of his donut, and now he almost choked on it, a big gob of jelly shooting out onto his beard and shirt. “You what! You’ve got a compound that works?”

“It looks like she does, George.” Pam laughed and handed him some of the napkins she’d brought in with the donuts.

“My God,” he exclaimed, trying to clean himself up. “After all this time, I can hardly believe it.”

“Holly, why don’t you go ahead and show us the results with your winning compound. Then we can all see what you’re talking about,” Pam said.

Holly took several minutes to run through her carefully prepared presentation. She’d put together several sets of photographs of brain cells treated with the drug. Plus, she’d compiled the results of all her experiments so they could be graphed and subjected to statistical analysis. It was a convincing, high-quality presentation that she knew was in perfect shape.

“As you can see, I’ve repeated these experiments a bunch of times now, and it’s no fluke,” she concluded. “This is the drug we’ve been looking for. It not only blocks plaque formation and brain cell death, but it can even reverse the damage after it’s started.”

George looked like he was about to burst. “So this really could be it! We could be sitting on a treatment for Alzheimer’s here. It’s great Holly, although I wish you’d let me in on it earlier. I could’ve helped with some of this.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Holly said. “It was just so exciting that I wanted to follow it through and make sure it was right before I said anything.”

She’d worried about George’s reaction, but it seemed okay. He looked a little hurt, but not angry. Maybe he’s too stupid to realize what I’ve done.

“There’s still a lot to do, George, don’t worry,” Pam said. “Holly, you’ve done a great job. These are fabulous results. Let’s open it up for other questions and comments, and then we can talk about what to do next.”

Francisco spoke first. “Did either of you ever see anything like this before?”

“No, all the compounds I tested had no effect on plaque formation. Guess Holly got the lucky number,” George replied.

“What is this stuff?” asked Janet. “Has it been used for anything before?”

“It’s a protein kinase inhibitor that was tried as an anticancer drug,” Holly said. “It didn’t work very well against cancer, but it works for us.”

Pam looked around the table. “Any more questions? If not, I want to emphasize that we need to keep this quiet for now. I don’t want anyone to know what we have until it’s ready for publication, and that includes the chemical library folks. For now, we’ll just call it by its lab code name, 40492. This is a once in a lifetime finding, and we can’t take a chance on anyone stealing our work because word leaked out prematurely. This all has to stay just between us.”

“Really?” Janet asked. “You mean other people would try to steal our results?”

George and Holly both laughed. “You’re still young, Janet. You’ll learn,” Holly said.

“I’m afraid that’s right,” Pam said. “We may not like to think so, but scientists are just people. No better than businessmen, lawyers, or anyone else. If other labs knew what 40492 was, it would be easy for them to do the experiments and claim it was their discovery. Just imagine if a lab like Eric Prescott’s got hold of this. Does everyone understand?”

Everyone nodded.

“Okay, then let’s focus on what we need to do next.” Pam stood up and went to the whiteboard in the front of the room. Holly turned off the projector and notebooks opened.

“Holly’s done a super job documenting the activity of 40492 in the culture system, but we need to replicate her findings in a way that’ll convince everyone there’s no possible bias in the results. I want to nail it by setting up a double-blind experiment so nobody can say we fudged anything.”

Holly had expected something like this. It would be okay as long as it was just a repeat of the work she’d already done. She’d still be the one with the primary data for the paper.

Pam diagrammed her scheme on the board as she spoke. “Holly, I’d like you to give me samples of 40492 and five other compounds that don’t work. Just label them one through six and don’t let me or anyone else know which one is 40492. I’ll recode the samples and give them to George to test. That way, none of us can possibly know which of them is the real drug. Once the results are in, we’ll sort everything out and hopefully see that 40492 did the right thing. Does that make sense to everyone?”

“Nice,” George said, “that should satisfy the skeptics.”

Holly and the others nodded.

“Okay, that’ll do it for the cell culture work,” Pam said. “But I think we should also try to show that 40492 works in mice.”

Holly sat up with a start. This wasn’t good. Doing mouse experiments would add a whole new dimension to the paper. It wouldn’t be all hers anymore.

“Really? I have a whole story in the cell culture system, all ready to publish after the double-blind experiment. It could take a long time to do mouse work. Don’t you think it’d be better to publish what we’ve already got?”

Pam shook her head. “I’ve thought about that, but the paper will be much more powerful if we take it to the next step and show that 40492 works in mice, not just in cell culture. And you told me yesterday that it’s been tried in mice and humans as a cancer drug, so we already know what kind of doses to use. That’ll save a lot of time.”

Holly was about to object further, but George interrupted. “So what exactly are you thinking of doing in mice? And how long will it take?” he asked.

“We’ll use mouse models that have been genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s,” Pam said. “After a couple of months, these mice develop plaques in their brains and show cognitive deficiencies, like humans with Alzheimer’s. We’ll have to get a really large batch of mice so we can test several doses of 40492 and try injections at different times, but I think we can get it done in three months or so.”

George smiled. “That’s great. If we can get the mouse work done in just a few months, it’s definitely worth waiting for.”

Crap, Holly thought. Pam’s set on doing this. Somehow I have to regain control.

But Vicky spoke up before Holly had a chance to say more. She’d done a lot of mouse work in her previous job, and now she looked a bit skeptical.

“Genetically engineered mice are great, but they’re also expensive,” Vicky said. “A large-scale experiment with several different doses and injection times is going to take a ton of mice and cost a fortune. Can we afford this kind of thing?”

“You’re absolutely right,” Pam agreed. “I did some rough calculations earlier to figure out what the mice for these experiments will cost. We’re probably talking close to four hundred thousand dollars by the time everything’s said and done. And no, we don’t have that kind of money. But we have to get this done, so I’m prepared to go to Dr. DeSilva, Director of the Langmere, and ask for help. This discovery is as important for the Langmere as it is for us, and I’m sure DeSilva will be prepared to dig up the cash to let us do the work.”

“He’d better,” George added. “We’re going to really put the Langmere on the map with this!”

Pam smiled. “Vicky, I’d like you to be in charge of the mouse work, so please start figuring out the details of what we need and get the experiments planned out. Janet and Francisco, I think it would be a good idea if the two of you also joined in the mouse experiments.”

Francisco said, “Great, I’m delighted to be included.”

“Me, too!” Janet said. “This is really exciting.”

Okay, Holly thought. If this is happening, I need to get in on it.

She raised her hand. “Can I also join in on the mouse work? I haven’t done that kind of experiment before, and I’d like to learn.”

“Sure,” Pam said. “George, would you like to be involved with the mice too?”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” he said. “I’m allergic to the little critters. Having them around the lab doesn’t bother me, but I get in trouble if I start handling them.”

Holly smiled to herself. I’m in and George is out. There’ll be a way to take advantage of these mouse experiments.