The ride was long and uncomfortable. There were stops, here and there. The ground becoming a little colder and damper each time, but aside from that it was always the same.

She was taken off of what she'd deemed to be a train, and tied squatting to a post above a hole in the ground. Then while she did what she thought she was supposed to, her gag would be removed, and a rather generous bottle of water would be forced down her throat. She found it all deliciously degrading, but her peers didn't seem to like it as much (judging from the screams and obsceneties that still made their way past her headphones).

After what must have been two days of travel, and most of the country, she was finally taken off of the train.

A far less gentle attendant pulled her up, and the lead through her nose ring was attached to the cuffs of the reduced in front of her, before her cuffs were attached to that of the one behind her.

An outsider would have seen a guy dressed like he was from a paralel universe where cops were surgeons pulling a train of 20 hunched over females with their hands tied to the face of the one behind them.

After a few minutes of walking, the convoy was dismantled, and Seven's whole sensory deprivation rig was removed in favor of a helmet.

As some generic goon strapped her down into what was seemingly an electric chair, she looked around the tiny room she found herself in.

"They sure do love these." she thought to herself

She barely got a chance to look around the room before a distracted Doc Brown looking guy in the same clothes as all the other staff came in, and sat down at the computer in the otherwise empty room.

"FDU-7687, formerly Liz Decker from Paradise, California? Hi."

Did he get those details wrong on purpose?

"So. I'm going to take your gag out, and let you talk for a bit while I get ready to start. I don't really care what you say, just keep talking."

The… doctor? took out her gag, and sat back down as Seven moved her jaw around a bit. He'd also done something behind her, but she wasn't in a position to care.

"I can talk?"

"For now, yes."

The doctor pressed a button on his computer, and Seven heard a faint hum and began to get just a teeny headache.

"Cool. Just real quick, my name is, or rather was, Liv Becker. Not Decker. And… uhm… Paradise is iiin… uhm… the other county, or country. The really blue one with all the cacti and gambling."

Her headache was getting worse, but that wasn't really bothering her. There was something else wrong.

"Sheee'd actually… what? the part of Paris horses think of when they… duhff… uhm…eat London."

The doctor pressed another button, and the hum got louder. Also, did his face just change? And oh lord the headache she felt like her brain was melting.

"Lon-don? Uuuhhmm. London. They'd at Walmart? Nigh neigh we…"

The doctor shushed her, and began to speak. Seven's eyes rolled back a little, but she was clearly trying to listen. And not piss herself from the unimaginable pain. But mainly listen.

"Well, Liz, here's the thing. When the reduction programs started people didn't like the idea of using thinking, talking, walking humans to replace the extinct species. Cows went didi mau, so we needed something else that ate just about whatever we fed it AND produced everything…"

the doctor gestured at Seven to say something.

"…Swahili…gergfhtm."

"No, not quite there yet."

the doctor shushed her again, and went back into a slighly disconnected rant.

"Well, we didn't find any. We absolutely needed Humans. But the governments didn't like that, so we created a workaround. A procedure using microwaves to… alter the brain a little, and some good ol' Pavlovian conditioning to repurpose the mind. Take them from person, to something else."

He made eye contact with her, and motioned her to say something. She clearly understood what the gesture meant, but just… couldn't. Nor could she understand a word he'd said.

"To what you now are. Legally and mentally."

He pressed the button again, stopping the hum, but not the headache, and stepped outside carrying her no longer needed gag.

A little while later she heard voices saying nothing getting closer, and she was pulled up by a flunky who lead her out past a girl who was clearly next in line to lose everything that had ever made her a person.