Chapter 7: ZIP (Zeta Interacting Protein)

The lab was silent, save for the rustle of papers and occasional frustrated sighs. Jemma squinted at yet another perfectly normal (well, normal for your unique situation) test result, her temples beginning to throb from hours of searching for anomalies that simply weren't there.
 
"Nothing," she muttered, setting aside Cho’s blood work analysis. "Not a single irregular marker in any of the conventional tests. How can they all be inconclusive?"
 
Leo slumped in his chair, absentmindedly spinning a pen between his fingers. "Stark’s fancy, new quantum-enhanced MRI is even worse. It's not showing anything. Not even baseline readings." He tossed the pen onto the desk with a clatter. "How are we supposed to find something that Dr Banner and Stark could have missed? It's like tasking us with solving the suspicious death of Nikola Tesla."
 
"There has to be something we're not seeing." Jemma spread the test results across the desk for the hundredth time. "Inconclusive blood work, scrambled genetic markers, textbook cellular structure..." she trailed off, stifling a yawn.
 
"Face it, Jemma. We're out of our depth here." Leo rolled his chair closer, gesturing at Dr Cho's impeccably detailed genetic analysis. “It's like someone went in and wiped her clean."
 
Jemma's head snapped up. "Say that again."
 
"What? We’re out of our depth?”
 
"No, the part about someone wiping her clean." She reached for the earliest batch of tests, her fatigue momentarily forgotten. "What if that's exactly what's happened?”
 
Leo straightened in his chair, catching her train of thought. "Like someone intentionally erased everything that could identify her?"
 
"We've fallen into the same rut as the others. Too focused on the bigger picture to see the details…" Jemma was already pulling up the digital copies of the test results on her tablet. "Let’s start at the beginning. See if you can get your hands on footage of that night.”
 
The lab hummed with renewed energy as they dove back into the data, this time looking not for what was wrong, but for the tiniest abnormality, just as Coulson had requested, however insignificant.
 
Jemma returned to Bruce’s first batch, taking a second look at his flagged protein markers. After a quick search on their database, she glanced up at Leo, face as white as a ghost.
 
“Fitz… Fitz, take a look at this... I don’t think our Jane Doe’s been faking or hiding anything.”
 
Leo rolled his chair over, leaning in to examine Jemma's tablet.
 
"According to the tox screen, her system's flooded with ZIP. Zeta Interacting Protein." Jemma zoomed in on your previously discarded results. "An experimental drug for PTSD sufferers. Rape victims, soldiers who've seen combat... Used sparingly, it can erase selective memories. In Jane Doe's case, it's created a chemically induced state of permanent amnesia."
 
"That's... that's not possible. ZIP trials were discontinued years ago. The side effects were too severe. Cognitive deterioration, personality disorders..." Leo inhaled deeply and blew out his breath. "The amount you're describing would basically reset the entire brain. Why would anyone–" He cut himself off, the implications hitting him like a punch to the gut.
 
Jemma turned to the live security feed, watching your sedated body back in the lab, and sighed heavily. "Poor girl's telling the truth, and here we are, treating her like a villain."
 
Her fingers traced the edge of the tablet, where your vitals blinked steadily on the screen. The evidence was there all along. Not in complex quantum readings or advanced genetic markers, but in the simple chemistry of a broken mind.
 
"We've gotta let Coulson and the Avengers know," Leo finally said, his voice urgent. "If someone's weaponizing ZIP at these levels..."
 
Jemma nodded, already pulling her phone from her back pocket, fingers hovering over Coulson's contact. She hesitated for a fraction of a second, glancing back at the live feed.
 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 
Your eyes opened slowly, every inch of your body feeling like it had been hit by a bus before being dragged through gravel. Or like the worst hangover known to man after a night of celebratory club hopping.
 
The bright LED lights and faint smell of surgical spirits reminded you where you were—Dr Banner's lab. But this was no refuge; its clinical coldness only magnified the ache left by the polygraph’s relentless drilling.
 
A figure shifted just outside the reinforced glass of your cell, drawing your attention. Blinking hard, you tried to bring them into focus. As they moved closer, you caught sight of a man, dressed sharply in a tailored suit that seemed as out of place here as you felt. He stopped just shy of the glass, his expression unreadable, with an official-looking folder in hand.
 
You tensed, your lips curving into a grimace. “Just what I needed. Another suit.” With a flicker of contempt, you narrowed your eyes, trying to gauge what he was after.
 
The man’s voice cut through the silence, calm, friendly enough, but carrying an authority that was hard to ignore. "The name’s Director Coulson… I mean you no harm. In fact, I’m here to help."
 
“Help?” you murmured, your voice loaded with scepticism. “Help me or help them?”
 
“You.”
 
Coulson’s response came without hesitation. So confident, so genuine, it was almost unnerving. And dear God, you wanted more than anything to believe him.
 
Finally, you reached out, accepting the folder he slipped through the slot with steady fingers. As you flipped through the pages, skimming the neatly typed reports, a pang of unease settled in your chest.
 
Coulson watched you in silence, his expression unchanged, yet somehow you felt safe in his presence. Unlike Agent Dickface in the interrogation room.
 
“I don’t understand what any of this means,” you whispered.
 
Coulson inched closer. “Your tox screen showed elevated levels of a compound called Zeta Interacting Protein, ZIP for short... It's an experimental drug, originally developed to help trauma victims by selectively erasing painful memories."
 
“E- erasing...?" Your voice cracked.
 
"In controlled doses, yes. But the amount in your system... someone deliberately induced total amnesia. They wanted to erase everything."
 
The tears came without warning, hot and sudden. So much for your asylum theory. This was real. Intentional. Someone had reached into your mind and methodically stripped away everything you were.
 
"Who..." you managed between shaky breaths, "who would do this? Why would they do this?"
 
"That's what we're going to find out."
 
You wiped at your eyes with trembling hands, but the tears wouldn't stop. It felt like losing everything all over again, only this time with the crushing knowledge that it had been deliberately taken from you. That somewhere out there was a person who had decided you didn't deserve to keep your own memories.
 
"I thought..." you swallowed hard, trying to steady your voice. "I thought I was crazy. That maybe I'd had some kind of breakdown. But this..." A bitter laugh escaped through the tears. "This is worse, isn't it?"
 
Coulson didn't answer immediately, but his silence was confirmation enough. Instead, he pulled up a chair and sat, meeting your eyes with unwavering focus.
 
"We're going to find who did this," he said quietly, the way a detective would say to a victim, knowing full well they’re not allowed to make such impossible promises.
 
You nodded, but still, your tears wouldn't stop. They weren't just tears of sadness anymore, but of rage, of loss, of violation. Someone had stolen your entire life, and you hadn't even been able to fight back. Hadn't even known there was something to fight against. You weren't crazy. You weren't broken. You were erased… and someone had done it on purpose.
 
Coulson let the silence settle, giving you a moment to breathe, to process the raw truth. Then, with a calm, steadying voice, he spoke again.
 
“You may never recover all of it… Your memories may stay in pieces... But that doesn’t mean you have to be Jane Doe. You can choose a new identity, forge a new path. Reclaim what was stolen.”
 
His words hung in the air.
 
The idea felt both frightening and oddly empowering. You’d been fighting against the unknown for days—fighting to remember, to make sense of foreign thoughts, emotions, and feelings of déjà vu that teased and taunted you. But maybe there was more to life than just chasing after the past.
 
"But if I just… let it go, it’d be like I’m giving up on myself.”
 
Coulson took a step closer. “Sometimes finding yourself isn’t about going back. Sometimes it’s about deciding who you want to be going forward.” His gaze softened. “If you want to keep searching, we’ll help. But know that this path can be yours, no matter what you remember or what you don’t.”
 
You struggled to hold back the gush of emotions. The helplessness, the fury, the deep, aching sense of being violated. It all whirled together, threatening to suffocate you. But in that moment, Coulson’s words created a thin lifeline. A way out of the darkness. Not backward, but forward. A choice.
 
As if sensing the hesitation, Coulson nodded to the folder still in your hands. “There’s a team here—a group of people who’ve all had things taken from them in one way or another. They know what it’s like to have to rebuild. To find purpose in what remains.” He paused, his voice dropping to barely a murmur. “You don’t have to be alone in this. Not unless you choose to be.”
 
You looked up, meeting his steady gaze. “Where would I even begin?”
 
The hint of a smile touched Coulson’s lips. “How about a name? Can’t imagine you’re okay with something as dehumanising as Jane Doe.”
 
“Y/N,” you whispered almost instantly. “I’d like to go by Y/N.”
 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 
FitzSimmons pressed on with their investigation, the lab alive with the hum of Times Square security footage looping on screens, bursts of police radio chatter, and the steady rustle of Jemma’s papers, punctuated by soft thuds as she let discarded files fall to the floor.
 
Finally, Leo pulled up the security footage on the main monitor. “Hey, Jemma… Take a look at this…”
 
Jemma moved to stand beside him, grateful for the break from Bruce’s reports.
 
"Unsurprisingly, about 80% of the cameras in Times Square are out of commission or out of range," he began, his fingers flying across the on-screen keyboard. "But Johnson managed to get us this."
 
With a few deft keystrokes, the screen flickered to life, grainy images resolving into the familiar chaos of the bustling city square. Pedestrians milled about, oblivious to the significance of the moment.
 
“White, nondescript van. Side door. Quick drop.”
 
"No plates though," Jemma observed, studying the scene intently.
 
Leo flicked over to another set of feeds, brow furrowed. "No, but I followed it through the CCTV grid. It enters this camera's dead zone across town and never comes out."
 
"So they knew the blind spots," she murmured, more to herself than Leo. "They planned this meticulously. They knew exactly what they were doing."
 
Leo’s fingers flew over the keyboard again, pulling up a series of new angles. The screen shifted, showing one fleeting frame after another as the van disappeared, evading each camera with insane precision.
 
"Yep. We’re dealing with pros here."
 
Jemma narrowed her eyes, her gaze unflinching. "Yeah? Well, we’re pros too."
 

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