Chapter 358: A Mouth on Fire
Actually," Alexis said, a calculating gleam entering her eyes, "there’s something I can offer you right now. No preparation required."
She moved to one of the equipment cabinets along the far wall, her movements purposeful and clinical. I watched as she opened several drawers before finding what she was looking for. It was a small, innocuous-looking metal canister with scientific labeling that I couldn’t read from my position on the examination table.
"What is it?" I asked, though part of me wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
She returned to her desk and set the canister down with the careful precision of someone handling dangerous materials. "Pure capsaicin extract. The primary alkaloid responsible for the sensation of heat in spicy foods."
I felt my eyebrows rise. "Capsaicin? Like... peppers?"
"Like peppers, but concentrated and purified." She opened the canister with a small tool, revealing a fine, almost crystalline powder that looked deceptively harmless. "This particular preparation clocks in at approximately eight million Scoville Heat Units."
The number meant nothing to me initially, but the way she said it—with the kind of reverence usually reserved for discussing high explosives—suggested it was significant.
"For reference," she continued, seeing my confusion, "a jalapeño pepper rates around five thousand Scoville units. Habaneros are typically between one hundred thousand and three hundred fifty thousand. The hottest natural peppers in the world, like the Carolina Reaper, reach about two point two million."
I stared at the innocuous powder, my mouth suddenly feeling very dry. "And this is...?"
"Eight million. Nearly four times hotter than the most extreme natural pepper on Earth." She pulled out a precision scale and began measuring with scientific accuracy. "Capsaicin is technically classified as a neurotoxin—it binds to pain receptors and creates the sensation of burning without actually causing thermal damage. It should trigger both Pain Resistance and Poison Resistance simultaneously."
The implications of what she was suggesting hit me like a physical blow. This wasn’t just eating spicy food. This was ingesting what amounted to concentrated chemical warfare in powder form.
"So I just... take a spoonful?" I asked, hoping I was misunderstanding the scope of what she had in mind.