Somehow, she found the voice reassuring. Perhaps it was the accent, proper English, the way Jean Luc had spoken. Dahj nodded her head, and followed Maeve out of the lobby. Where else would she have gone?
Dahj could hear voices talking from a block away, categorize them, recall them later perfectly word for word. But she exactly when they were out of human ear shot. It was only then when she began to speak.
"My boyfriend and I... we were celebrating. I was just accepted as a research fellow at the Daystrom Institute," she began. Dahj told Maeve about the soldiers-- more like team of assassins-- that broke into their apartment. She didn't describe the way her boyfriend died-- only that he had been killed.
As the assassins beat her, Dahj explained, they also interrogated her. They wanted to know where she was from. But Dahj was programmed to believe she was from Seattle, that she'd been born and raised there, that her dad was a xeno-botanist. Even with her defense systems and programming activated, Dahj didn't understand the line of questioning or what the tactical team was after.
Once they put a black hood over her head, and threatened to take her away, that's when Dahj knew what to do. Killing her attackers blindfolded felt as natural and effortless as breathing. And then, in her mind's eye, she saw a man's face, Jean Luc Picard.
She went to him because she felt safe with him. Dahj explained it was Jean Luc who thought she was the daughter of an android named Data, that she was an android herself. She started to believe him, they were going to go to the Daystrom Institute, the place where she'd been accepted for a fellowship to learn more, when they were attacked again. Dahj tried to keep Jean Luc safe but one of the assassins had a surprise weapon. A sort of capsule in his mouth that allowed him to spit acid before he died. Dahj recalled she remembered burning, that even the weapon in her hands was burning.
She couldn't bring herself to recall the rest of her death or the way the weapon exploded at her feet, killing her.
Instead Dahj asked, "Was it true? Is all of this really happening?"
That was when Dahj suspected Maeve wasn't human. Like Dahj, Maeve looked human, appeared to be made out of flesh and blood. But unlike humans, the micro data like pupil dilatation, pulse, blood pressure-- they appeared even, constant. Unlike Jean Luc, Dahj would not be able to sense if Maeve was telling her the truth or not but Dahj found the lack of alien stimulus strangely comforting.