Songbird (So Mi): the FIA Netrunner at the Heart of Phantom Liberty

Songbird is the codename of Song So Mi, a netrunner for the New United States' Federal Intelligence Agency and the right hand of President Rosalind Myers. She's the character who pulls V into Phantom Liberty: she reaches V through the Relic as Space Force One is shot down over Dogtown, and everything after that turns on whether V trusts her. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Who is So Mi?#

Song So Mi grew up in Brooklyn with her mother. She talked a ripperdoc into selling her a worn-out cyberdeck at about 13 and spent her teens jacking in from wherever she could, taking the riskiest netrunning gigs going. Her game database entry says she worked solo, spent everything on better gear, and became a legend fast enough that some people doubted she was real. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

At 19 she broke into a Militech datafort. NetWatch nearly caught her and Militech traced her signal. Reed argued for recruiting her instead of killing her, and went to New York to make the offer. She said no until he pointed out that NetWatch would come for the people she loved, and only the FIA could stop that. So Mi took it as blackmail, which it was, and left with him. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

What is Songbird's job?#

Once she'd sworn allegiance to the NUSA and taken the name Songbird, So Mi got the agency's prototype tech and had to learn something new: taking orders. Her missions included hiding NUSA officials' movements at secret meetings and scrubbing the digital trail of commandos. NetWatch kept hearing her in the Net, and her trail kept going quiet near the Blackwall. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

That's the core of her story. Myers sent her through the Blackwall, the barrier that keeps rogue AIs out of the usable Net, over and over. Each dive cost her. By 2077 her body was failing, she'd replaced more and more of it with Militech chrome, and she describes losing pieces of herself to something on the other side. Her look through the Relic, the punk jacket and the old Samurai pin, is how she looked before the damage. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Why did Songbird betray Reed?#

During the Unification War, Reed ran an FIA cell in Night City and So Mi was part of it. The Ten of Swords comic covers Reed's last day in the city in 2070, when the operation was shut down and So Mi gave him a way out on a maglev train. (Cyberpunk 2077: Ten of Swords)

The train was a trap. So Mi locked Reed in a carriage with Arasaka troopers waiting. Reed survived, and Phantom Liberty reveals that the order came from Myers: Reed's death was one of Arasaka's conditions for a ceasefire, and the President had So Mi arrange it. She remembers it on the way to the Moon shuttle, right before admitting she's done the same thing to V. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

What happens in Phantom Liberty?#

So Mi made a deal with Kurt Hansen, the colonel who runs Dogtown: she'd deliver Myers, and he'd hand over a Militech neural matrix holding an AI from beyond the Blackwall, which could repair the damage to her. Hansen double-crossed her by shooting Space Force One down rather than grounding it. So Mi got Myers into the plane's safe room, ejected in a lifepod herself, and guided V through the rescue. She was later captured by Hansen while protecting them. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Myers then sends V and Reed to get her back. Along the way V learns that So Mi was working with Hansen, that she's dying, and that she's after the matrix. She promises V it can fix the Relic too. Reed, who suspects she'll run, plans to stop her with a custom ICEbreaker. In the quest "Firestarter," V has to pick a side. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

What happens to Songbird in each ending?#

Every outcome depends on V's choices:

• V helps So Mi. They escape the stadium through the sewers and head for the NCX Spaceport, chased by the FIA and NUSA black ops. On the monorail she confesses the matrix only works once. V can still put her on the shuttle to the Moon, where she gets her treatment and later sends V a thank-you, or hand her to Reed at the last moment. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)
• V hands her over at the spaceport. Reed takes her in. She gets treatment, but as a prisoner who'll be put back to work for Myers. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)
• V sides with Reed. The ICEbreaker enrages her. She taps the Blackwall to escape, falls into cyberpsychosis, is caught by MaxTac, escapes again and hides in the Cynosure facility, where the AIs are eating her mind. What's left of her protects V on the way down and asks V to kill her. V can grant that or bring her back to the NUSA alive. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Bringing So Mi back alive keeps Myers' side of the deal on the table, and that is the route to The Tower ending, where the Relic is removed. Letting her go to the Moon, or killing her at Cynosure, closes it. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Songbird and Johnny Silverhand#

So Mi tells V she doesn't care for Johnny Silverhand's music. Yet she kept a vinyl of Samurai's "Never Fade Away," and the jacket she wears through the Relic carries a Samurai pin. It's one of the small hints that the person the FIA built, and the kid from Brooklyn, aren't quite the same. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)