When the whole thing started, Cammi was in the middle of being interrogated by Agent Brand for trying to steal an interstellar cruiser. As far as we know, Cammi's been on her own since the end of Annihilation. Well, there was that chaos sprite that had been hanging around Thanos prior to that, but they parted company at some point. Drax did go looking for her later (after leaving the Guardians of the Galaxy), but got sidetracked bringing his daughter back to life. He never did get back on Cammi's trail. So she's had to survive by herself, an Earth teenager out in the universe. She made herself strong enough to survive it, and she's justifiably proud of it.
But in her current situation, she might not be strong enough, and the circumstances work against her. On a spaceship, she can probably manipulate its systems to give herself an advantage of her enemies outnumber or outpower her. But in Arcade's world, he controls everything. She can set a few mines, but in a place as large and variable as this new Murderworld, that's only going so far. When X-23 nearly kills her, then lets her go because she's not the one X was after, that's a bit of a blow to her confidence. She was completely helpless, and the person who had her didn't even consider her worth killing. She didn't take it well, since stopping to do push-ups while castigating yourself is not the smartest plan.
The key is what came after. She started forming alliances. First with Darkhawk, then later Chase and Nico, and eventually the rest of the non-evil kids. It isn't a case of her using them as shields or cannon fodder, like Katy was doing with her boyfriend or Deathlocket. Cammi generally tries to make peace, come up with plans, get everyone on the same page and working towards the same goal. She's consistently approached the situation as though there's a solution other than playing by Arcade's rules.
Which makes sense, given her past. I was introduced to Cammi during Annihilation: Nova, and then she reappeared in Annihilation proper. Consider what she saw there. A diverse group of people, many of them with past conflicts, some dating back millennium, banding together to fend off a seemingly overwhelming force bent on killing them all. Annihilus' forces destroyed entire worlds, entire empires, he had Thanos, and eventually even Galactus as an unwilling weapon. And he still lost. Because people worked together, because they didn't give up, because they kept learning from setbacks and failures to try different approaches. Compared to all that, the current situation with Arcade probably didn't look too bad, provided they didn't wind up at each other's throats. Which, thanks to Nico and Chase, is exactly what happened.
It's a little like the shift Abnett and Lanning tried to bring about in Drax. When he joined the Guardians, he tried to be less Destroyer and more human, as he put it. There was the friendship with Phyla, trying to reconnect with his daughter Moondragon, trying to come to grips with the number of lives he'd taken over the years, the people he'd lost. It didn't necessarily make him less violent, but he was more, selective, or precise about it. And he had maybe a more concrete idea of what he was fighting for, beyond some vague sense he was supposed to "get" Thanos (that's how the brain-damaged version of him I remember from '90s Silver Surfer comics seemed). For as much as Cammi might want to be the tough, emotionally closed off badass who doesn't care about anyone, she can't help herself. She formed attachments whether she wanted to or not. The question now is whether those attachments are going to save her life, or get her killed.
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