Disclaimer: Terra Nova is not mine.
She likes everything about working in the lab. She thinks it is something that she would have chosen herself if things had been different. She sees no reason to allow unwanted outside influence to spoil that for her. She is going to keep it for herself despite the fact that it is what they wanted from her. She is good at the things required of her in the land of analysis and data and extrapolation - that is why they wanted her in the first place after all.
It is also practical for her to continue. She has to do something. This place works a bit like most of human history as far as Maddy can tell from her still admittedly small exposure to the settlement under its return to the commander's supervision - meaning that a lengthy transition between being a child and an adult is not really a thing. Maddy is seeing firsthand that the concept of teenager really only works in a place that is relatively comfortable and has leisure time at the majority of the population's disposal, and the world from which she had come (despite its extensive number of issues) still fell within those parameters. Here, if you can handle a job and take care of yourself, then you do. There are teenagers working jobs and sharing housing space with each other with nary an eyebrow raised, and Maddy is pleased to follow the precedent.
She, at sixteen, can meet those standards of holding a job and being responsible for her own well-being. Thus, there has been no discussion (at least to her knowledge) of fostering her with some family. This does not mean that there are not people around the colony who check up on those who are living on their own, but it is just that - checking in and not taking over. It works for her, and as long as she is working and remembering to feed herself, then it will keep working that way.
Malcolm talks to her a lot more now that someone threatening isn't looming in the background. They work on a lot of related projects in the labs and are casual chitchat friendly with each other. Malcolm talks science to her in a way that she isn't sure that she has ever really had before even while keeping a certain distance from personal matters. He never seems to notice when he slips up and asks her mother to hand him something or to check a calculation for him, and Maddy never brings it to his attention. She has seen his credentials - knows when and where he had gone to school. She can put the pieces together and read between the lines.
It is nice to know that there is someone else around who knows that her mother exists (even if he never intentionally verbalizes that knowledge). It's comforting. She soon finds that that comfort can come from a place as well as from a person. That place is commonly referred to by the people in the settlement as the Eye.
She spends copious amounts of time in the Eye starting from the moment that she first understands what it is. There's a sort of first come first serve sign up schedule for the place which is a repository for more information than she could access in multiple lifetimes (which begs the question of why - if Terra Nova was not really the second chance that was sold to the public, then why make it the warehouse for something like that). There are never very many people on the schedule, however, just the occasional research session or reminiscing person viewing old haunts via audio and visual files. There is almost always an open time slot when she wants one (which she can admit is as often as she can reasonably justify it to herself).
It feels good to view documents that have not been meddled with by Population Control. She starts with her brother's birth certificate even while she sighs over the fact that she knows that she will not be able to pull one up for Zoe (because, obviously, her little sister had never had legal paperwork to be archived). She rereads and rereads copies of her mother's academic journal articles from graduate school and tries to recreate the tones and timbre of her voice in her head as though she is sitting beside her reading them out loud. She even locates an article about a massive narcotics bust in which her father is repeatedly quoted that she can revisit while she remembers how he always gruffly complained about the nonsensical questions reporters around the station would ask.
These are digital records of her family's existence that remain despite the information purge on the other side of the portal - nothing has been tampered with here. She finds time in the Eye soothing and motivating, and it has nothing to do with the wide variety of knowledge at her disposal within its confines.
She spends time in the Eye, she works, and she chats with Malcolm. He is the one that mentions to her that the Phoenix Group and Sixer colonists had headed in the direction of some location referred to as the Badlands. This makes him nervous. She doesn't think that there is a thinking person in the entire colony that believes that their altercations are over, but Malcolm is especially concerned by their choice for a point of retreat. The Badlands, he had told her, was no place to set up a camp, and the Sixers would know that. This indicates to him that they have a deeper plot at their disposal, and he nods his head in a sort of a knowing manner whenever Alicia comes to pull her out of the lab for "girl talk."
In Alicia's world, this means survival training and self-defense lessons (she figures Malcolm knows this and approves given his concerns about the precariousness of their situation). She doesn't mind learning what Alicia has to teach her (and what she has to teach is quite extensive), and she grudgingly admits over the near constant complaints of her muscles that the running the older woman insists on becoming a part of her daily routine is a really good idea.
Then, there is Mark. Mark is just sort of always around - walking her home or carrying her groceries when he isn't leaving wildflowers on her doorstep for her to find. She doesn't know exactly how she feels about that except that she knows that she doesn't not like it.
She is building a life here or really a life is building itself around her, and she is finding that she is okay with that. She has goals and plans, but they require time. She is never going to stop working for and toward them, but she decides that living in the meantime isn't something that she is going to avoid.
AN: As we all know, this is how the season ends - portal not working and enemies in the Badlands. We're leaving off in the same place (different circumstances). Thank you to everyone who left me feedback along the way. Your comments make my day!