Songbird in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty's Netrunner, Explained
The short version
Songbird is Song So Mi, a netrunner of Korean descent who works for the New United States' FIA as the aide to President Myers in Phantom Liberty. Minji Chang voices her in English.
On this page
What Songbird is#
Songbird is an operational nickname. The woman behind it is Song So Mi, a netrunner who started out as a freelancer taking suicide-run gigs in New York and ended up working for the NUSA's Federal Intelligence Agency. Her cover name sounds sweet, and nothing about the job is.
She is the right hand of NUSA President Rosalind Myers, and she is willing to go beyond the Blackwall. That is what Myers uses her for.
What she wants from V#
Songbird reaches V in Dog Eat Dog with a deal: rescue President Myers from the Space Force One crash site in Dogtown, and she will help stop the Relic from killing V. Hole in the Sky is the rescue itself.
The chain continues with Spider and the Fly, Birds with Broken Wings and Firestarter. Dogtown, the breakaway district in Pacifica, is run by a warlord named Kurt Hansen.
The Reed connection#
Reed was her handler and mentor, and he got her into the FIA at nineteen after she hacked a Militech datafort. They both worked in Night City during the Unification War.
Spoilers What Reed owes her
At the end of the war, President Myers ordered So Mi to stage Reed's death as a condition of an Arasaka ceasefire. He survived and lived as a sleeper agent. She has been carrying that betrayal for years, which is why V's choice in the finale is not simple. Opinion: the whole expansion is two people who loved each other and lied about it.
Spoilers The choice
Songbird has been using the Blackwall, and it is eating her mind. She plans to trade Myers to Hansen for a neural matrix, which can cure one person once. She intended to use it on herself. See Phantom Liberty for how the choice lands.
In Firestarter, V picks Songbird or Reed. If V sides with her, the quest chain goes through The Killing Moon, ending with Songbird going to the Moon via the NCX spaceport. If V sides with Reed, the chain goes through Somewhat Damaged, with Songbird caught by MaxTac and V choosing whether to take her back or end her life.
Spoilers How to play the expansion
Play Phantom Liberty in the order the game hands it to you, and do not trust Songbird's first deal. Opinion: it works because she lies to V and still has a point.
The real antagonist is the Blackwall, and she is how the game makes that concrete. After the launch trailer, read the Solomon Reed page, then Netrunners for the rules behind what she can do.