Author’s Note
People talk about Alzheimer’s like it is a neat little diagnosis that behaves itself. It is not. It is a long crime novel where the clues are out of order, the suspects multiply, and the detectives keep changing shifts halfway through the investigation.
This whole series started because someone sent me a research abstract about lipids and microglia, and my brain instantly went, “Ah. So even the cleanup crew might be part of the problem. Lovely.”
I am not a neuroscientist. I am a wife, a grandmother, and a woman whose life was rearranged by three quiet words on a chart. My job is not to pretend I can run the lab. My job is to drag whatever is true about this disease back to the kitchen table, where the rest of us live and love and try again tomorrow.
So here is a story.
It is fiction, but the science walks very close to the edge of the actual research. The villain is not a person. The villain is the forgetting.
Welcome to Case File 001.
CASE FILE 001
07:12 PM, Imaging Suite B
The first rule of being in a hospital after hours is simple. Everything sounds guilty.
The vents hum like they are hiding something. The lights flicker with the confidence of a suspect who knows the cameras are broken. Even the steady beep of an orphaned machine sounds like a lie.
Dr. Mara Wynn knew all this. She still walked in.
Her badge lit the reader green. The door unlocked with a soft click. The air that hit her felt wrong. Not cold. Intentional.
Imaging Suite B was dark except for the monitors. Their icy glow made every object look halfway erased, like a sketch abandoned before the final outline.
The screen saver should have been running.
It was not.
Someone had left a scan up. Not paused. Active.
Mara stepped forward. Then she stopped. Her brain registered it a second before her body did.
A shape on the floor.
Dr. Halston Reeves, folded beside the console like the universe had let go of him mid-sentence.
At first she thought he had tripped. Then she saw the blood. Not much. Thin. Too polite. The kind that said the room had swallowed the sound.
She knelt. Training took over. Fingers to his neck even though she already knew. No pulse. No warmth. No hope.
Her eyes lifted to the monitor, because that was something she could still control. The PET scan glowed with scattered clusters of amyloid. The familiar enemy.
But someone had written across it. Not with software. With ink. Jagged. Urgent. Human.
THE LIPID LIES
Mara froze.
Halston did not do melodrama. He did meticulous data and mild annoyance at undergraduates. He did not write riddles across brain scans.
A sound behind her made her turn. The room was empty. The door was closed.
The noise had come from the console. A quiet mechanical tick, like a machine taking sides.
A file window blinked open.
Halston’s restricted folder.
The one that required triple clearance. Including hers.
A new text file appeared. One line.
BMP-22 / GRN / LAC-3
Mara’s stomach tightened.
BMP. Bis(monoacylglycero)phosphate. A lysosomal stress lipid. A signal the brain’s trash system was overwhelmed.
GRN. Progranulin. A gene that kept appearing in papers like a recurring character no one had given a full backstory to.
LAC-3.
Laconia?
Ridiculous. Except Halston had been in New Hampshire last month. “Just a quick meeting,” he had said. Nothing important. People only say that when it is very important.
Her phone buzzed. Unknown caller. Then again.
She answered.
A voice. Smooth. Controlled. Sanded down to nothing specific.
“You should not be in that room.”
Mara clenched her jaw. “Who is this?”
“You need to leave. Right now.”
“Dr. Reeves is dead. I am calling security.”
“If you call security, you will be escorted out and you will not return.”
Her pulse jumped. “Is that a threat?”
“Protocol,” the voice said. “And protocol says you do not touch his work.”
“My fingerprints are already everywhere. Try again.”
Silence. Listening silence.
Finally: “Do you know what BMP-22 is?”
“Yes,” Mara snapped. “It is a lipid that piles up when the cleanup system fails.”
“Good. Then you understand what you are looking at.”
She looked again at Halston’s message. The Lipid Lies. Her chest tightened.
The voice lowered. “Leave before you become part of the dataset.”
The call ended.
The cursor on the screen blinked. Waiting.
A new folder appeared. Like a bruise blooming on the screen.
CID_PROTOCOL
Her throat went dry.
CID.
An acronym that felt too deliberate. Too practiced.
She clicked.
A prompt appeared.
ENTER KEY
She did not have a key.
Except something caught her eye.
Halston’s hand. His index finger stained with ink, pressed against the tile as if he had tried to write even after he fell.
A sliver of white under his nail.
Mara leaned in. She slid it free. A torn barcode label from a slide.
Text printed below it:
LAC-3
ELEPHANT
Mara stared. Elephant. The universal symbol for memory.
The door lock clicked.
Not locking.
Unlocking.
Someone was on the other side.
No time left.
Mara turned to the console. The cursor blinked like it was daring her.
She typed the only word she had.
ELEPHANT
The screen unlocked.
A single sentence appeared.
THE CASE BEGINS IN LACONIA.
The door handle turned.
The monitor went black.
Case File 001 concludes here.
What follows is context, not story.
Case File 002 is now live. The investigation moves forward.
Afterword: Why This Story Exists
If you are wondering whether this is still about Alzheimer’s, yes. Completely.
The truth is that the brain is not one disease. It is a whole crime novel, and we are still finding the right suspects. Lipids. Microglia. Genes like GRN. Astrocytes. Stress patterns. Cleanup systems that get overwhelmed. Messy science. No single villain.
This story is fiction so we can walk through the puzzle without pretending any of this is simple. The forgetting is the enemy. The clues are real.
If you want Case File 002, tell me. I already know where Mara is going next.
Cheers,
Vanessa