Melissa is a very capable teenager, but her feelings and goals are disturbed by the complex and conflicted situations she finds herself in.

When we first meet her, she has been sent with Leo by Captain Leland Barnes on a mission to find topsoil for the settlement that he planned to establish. It is strongly implied that she and Leo had a romantic or sexual relationship and their mission was a punishment for that relationship.

Melissa does not really dispute that reading of facts, but she does take the punishment to heart and goes to extraordinary lengths to attempt to achieve Barnes' approval. She accepts his messianic tendencies to perhaps a higher degree than anyone else except himself.