Chapter 33: The Taste Interrogation Room

The chorizine is dripping down the torture rack into a composition of The Last Supper as Luna's tongue is pinned to the electrodes.

"Name the recipe for Cream of Mushroom Soup," said the flavor priest with a syringe of concentrated nostalgia jiggling, "or inject 200% homesickness into your tear ducts."

Rule #151: All memories must pass a taste purity test. Artificial pyrotechnic fumes wafted from the vents of the interrogation room, and the traitors with their tongues cut out hung from the ceiling, swaying to the rhythm of the interrogation - their esophaguses stuffed with expired spice packets, the aroma of penitence seeping out of them with every breath.

"I said..." Luna's saliva corroded the metal restraints, "... That soup was spiked with baby's fetus fat..."

The flavor gauge suddenly whistled shrilly. The Priest's mechanical tongue ejected a laser blade and disemboweled her stomach pouch, the half-digested remnants of a military canister forming a holographic projection on the analyzing table - the very same security camera footage of the convenience store president making cocktails with Luna's menarche blood at Christmas dinner.

"Rule 152 addendum." The priest shoved the memory remnants into a spray bottle, "Each lie requires compensation with an equal amount of pain spice."

Luna's irises fissured into barcode form as capsaicin mixed with memories of childhood trauma was sprayed into her nostrils. It's an anti-counterfeiting measure implanted at HQ, and right now it's broadcasting her deepest fear: that on her fifth birthday, her mother washed away the traces of her assault by Cole with hot cocoa, and that the president's autograph is printed on the bottom of the cocoa powder can.

"Surprise?" The Priest's dentures fall out, revealing a taste chip hidden on the inside, "Every time you say a taste word, it awakens a clone..."

The floor tiles of the interrogation room suddenly became transparent, and three hundred Luna clones soaked in the sauce pool below. They were marinated in different sauces; the Sichuan pepper-flavored clone was writing a distress signal in red oil, while the mustard-flavored clone had melted her eyeballs. The black truffle clone at the bottom suddenly opens its eyes and uses its mouth to transmit Morse code:

"White pepper required for patricide."

"Rule 153!" Luna crunches the salt bomb in her molars, "When flavor becomes a weapon, turn the kitchen into an incinerator."

The interrogation room was instantly reduced to a chemical reaction scene as the blast of air toppled the flavor racks. Luna's blood suddenly boils as the Priest tries to seal her wounds with caramel - it's a pre-programmed anti-betrayal procedure from HQ, and the nanobots in her bloodstream begin to reconfigure her taste buds, modulating her screams into the melody of Jingle Bells.

"You think taste is a weakness?" The priest's pupils fissured into spice grinders, "This is the New World's communion service..."

He pressed the incinerator button, and the clones whistled and melted in the pool of sauce. The stumps of the black truffle clones spelled out a coded disk, and Luna licked her corroded tongue over the scales to unlock the hidden garden of living spices - where nutmegs cultivated from the brains of traitors were planted, each fruit repeating the dying words of the dead.

Moonlight penetrates the exhaust fan and shines on the priest's recipe bible, and Luna flips through the gilt-stamped pages to find that each recipe is a guide to torture: "French foie gras requires a living, fatty liver," and "Stargazing pie requires implantation of a near-death memory." The very last page had her name written in blood, and the ingredient list showed:

"Main ingredient: convenience store president's sperm/mother's despair value 70g/brothers' love juice"

"Article 154!" She shoved the bible up the priest's rectum, "All cooking must be lit with the cook's pubic bone."

As the living spice garden bursts into flames and the screaming nutmegs burst into encrypted data, Luna's retinas parse out a three-dimensional map ending at the "genetic backroom" of the convenience store's headquarters. A holographic message from the president emerges from the flames:

"Daughter, come and taste the food of your life."

Suddenly, the surviving Mustard clone crawls out of the ashes. Her skin is festering, revealing a fluorescent green network of taste nerves under the skin, "Don't trust those flavors..." She vomits code-carrying bile, "... They buried it in your amygdala..."

Before the words left her mouth, the Priest's mechanical tongue pierced her temple.Luna took the opportunity to shove a saline bomb down his throat, exploding salt crystals forming the latest rule in the air:

"When the tongue becomes a snitch, forge the taste buds into bullets."

As the interrogation room collapsed, she tasted blood at the corner of her mouth - the exact flavor of the President's favorite red burgundy. In the distance came a chorus of clones, using their modified vocal cords to simulate the sizzle of a frying steak, and the lyrics were from Section 48 of the convenience store employee handbook:

"Let every customer's tear be our seasoning."