Something in her stirred, she paid it no mind.
A cycle passed, and then another, this feeling, this buzzing, refused to leave her.
She didn't know what she needed. She had everything but…
Movement. She needed to move.
She awoke, synthetic arm deftly pulling the data cables from the back of her neck, each producing an echo as they dropped against the datacenter floor.
How long had it been since she had to move? She didn't count the days anymore, the capacity of the proxy she was using to move her prime consciousness was limited, the processing systems had been prone to overheating. She didn't use the old thing often - it was from a different time, for a different "her" she thought. One that was content to interface and interact with some semblance of individuality.
An error, left leg, servo cluster two unresponsive. She let off a mental sigh, that was the knee - she could get away with one arm, but one leg? No, she had more self respect than to crawl on the datacenter floor.
She reached out, through the massive uplink cables she had retrofitted into her back, and the skittering of her smallest drones followed. Several meters away, in a long-forgotten storeroom, a pile of proxy bodies, her bodies, laid forgotten by their creator, just like everything else here.
Her drones wasted no time, they were her, after all, tearing one of the legs from the deactivated proxies and carrying it over to her. She gripped her thigh near the joint, and with unrestricted mechanical strength, she pulled her left leg off at the hip. Cables snapped, some at designated points and others not, synthetic tendon and nerve cable popping like a rubber band stretched too far. There was a proper way to do this, but her repair mites would quickly weld and solder and melt things back together.
She had been designed to be pretty, once - these proxies were intended to be appealing, but she had long abandoned the upkeep necessary to keep the facade. So many panels of the proxy were long gone, she had removed them to make repairs, and decided that the exposed cabling and circuity suited her more. She was not human, nor a facsimile of one. In this way, this body was hers. She had only really taken time to save the face panels, she was fond of the soft, kind looking face they had made for her. The contrast suited her nicely.
The mites finished their work, she tested the leg - moving it back and forth. It was fine. The range of motion was the same as the old one, no changes there.
She stood, freeing the rest of her body from the pile of network and data cables, rolling her shoulders and stretching - there was still some stiffness to work off.