It's life Jim...

If Marcus was on ice, Rufus was warming up. The machine, his inseparable companion, whilst maintaining control of him, was continuing to reprogramme the youth. Starting with an apparently blank canvas, the machine began restoring awareness to Rufus. It was replacing what native intelligence had been there with highly focused instinct for survival, for the machine via survival of the physical monster that Rufus had become.

Whilst Marcus had been a monster himself, he’d been undoubtedly brilliant, having created an almost living being in electronic form. The machine was learning to survive through quasi animal instincts.

The machine lived... almost.