Shard.11: Songbird (So Mi) - Dancing in "Phantom Liberty", the Loneliness of a Woman Who Betrayed Everything to Survive

Introduction: Souls Worn Down in the Neon Shadows, and the Giant Exploitation Mechanism Named the State

In Night City, where rain mixed with blood and oil pours down, humanity is the cheapest consumer good. It is an everyday occurrence for gangs crawling the streets and mercs living day-to-day to be ground down by the system, but the structure of exploitation is not confined solely to the sludge at the bottom. Rather, it is at the very heart of the supreme power of the NUSA, right beside the President, that the most cruel and refined “deprivation of humanity” in the cyberpunk world exists.

The subject of this article, Song So Mi (codename: Songbird), is a genius netrunner who reigns as the right hand of NUSA President Rosalind Myers, yet she is also “state property” subjected to the most severe exploitation in this world. Her story can be described as a tragedy that pushes the central propositions of cyberpunk literature—Transhumanism (the loss of humanity through mechanization) and Existentialism (the proof of self through choice)—to their absolute limits.

Within the irresistible system of massive capital and state power, she betrayed her mentor, deceived her friends, and ultimately even used the life of a merc (V) in the same predicament as herself, all to survive. However, hidden behind that ruthless Machiavellianism is the figure of a lonely woman, terrified of having her ego devoured by the abyss of the Blackwall, clinging to warm memories of Brooklyn. This report integrates shard records, environmental storytelling, and NPC dialogue logs scattered throughout the base game and the expansion DLC Phantom Liberty, to thoroughly unravel the “whereabouts of the soul” and the causality of a woman who betrayed everything to live.

1. Echoes of Brooklyn—The Death of a Genius and the Birth of “Songbird”

Songbird’s history begins with the loss of freedom and the “death of the self.” Tracing her footsteps is nothing less than observing the existential deconstruction process of how an individual’s soul is converted into state infrastructure.

1.1 The Curse of Talent and Inescapable Blackmail

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 29, 2045, So Mi lived with her mother and began her path as a netrunner at the age of 13 after acquiring a used cyberdeck from a local ripperdoc. Her extraordinary talent, which allowed her to handle dangerous gigs in her teens—such as hacking into a Biotechnica facility in Oregon—eventually drove her to the brink of ruin. At the age of 19, she attempted unauthorized access to a system using a Militech datafort in Ankara as a proxy, but this was intercepted by NetWatch.

Appearing before her in this desperate crisis was Solomon Reed, a highly skilled agent of the FIA. In exchange for “saving” her from her NetWatch pursuers, Reed demanded she join the FIA. However, this recruitment was essentially nothing more than blackmail. Reed coldly suggested that if she refused the offer, NetWatch’s retaliation would extend not only to herself but also to her close friends, including Lucas.

For the young So Mi, this was a coercion of obedience with no room for choice. When she left Brooklyn, she showed no sadness and refused to look back. She understood that clinging to the past would endanger those left behind. Shortly thereafter, “Song So Mi” was officially declared dead, and her tombstone was erected in Calvary Cemetery in New York.

Year	Event	Philosophical and Narrative Implications
2045	Born in Brooklyn, New York.	”Human roots” beyond corporate control. It becomes the only memory she later clings to.
Circa 2058	Acquires a cyberdeck at age 13 and becomes a netrunner.	Acquisition of skills for survival on the streets. The beginning of overconfidence in technology.
Circa 2064	Infiltrates a Militech datafort. Intercepted by NetWatch.	The defeat of the individual against the system. The death of a free netrunner.
Same Year	Recruitment and blackmail into the FIA by Solomon Reed. The official “death” of So Mi.	The birth of “Songbird.” The beginning of the state’s privatization and exploitation of an individual’s existence.

At this moment, the existence of a single girl was completely erased, and the NUSA’s strategic weapon, “Songbird,” was born. The cyberpunk “violence by massive power”—the privatization of an individual’s soul by a state agency—is symbolized here.

2. The Unification War and the Original Sin of Betrayal—Machiavellianism in Night City During the Cold War

Incorporated into the FIA, Songbird grew into a highly skilled agent under Reed’s protection and guidance. Starting with a mission in Colombia, the two navigated numerous covert struggles. Records show that after a mission, she gave a medal awarded to her by President Rosalind Myers to a homeless person begging on the street. This action is a manifestation of her finding no value in fictions such as the “greater good” or “honor” touted by the state, and her unconscious realization that she herself was a vulnerable person exploited by the system.

2.1 The Tragedy of the Maglev Train and the Deception of the Greater Good

The Unification War, which broke out between 2069 and 2070, decisively derailed their fates. Reed’s FIA unit, which had infiltrated Night City, was conducting covert operations targeting Arasaka, who had allied with the Free States. However, by the end of the war, the unit was severely depleted and driven into a corner.

When a ceasefire agreement (peace negotiations) was struck between the NUSA and Arasaka, the Arasaka side essentially presented one condition: “the handover (elimination) of Solomon Reed.” For President Rosalind Myers, the life of a single capable agent was nothing more than a trivial sacrifice compared to national peace and corporate compromise. Myers ordered the withdrawal of the operation and simultaneously gave Songbird a secret order to purge Reed.

Aboard a maglev train escaping Night City, she locked her mentor, Reed, in a car where Arasaka soldiers were waiting, and abandoned him. This action carved deep trauma and guilt into the rest of her life. The self-justification that she “was just following the President’s orders” never saved her soul. As a cog integrated into the state’s system, she was forced to kill the most trusted person who had saved her (albeit in a twisted way).

This betrayal, based on ruthless Machiavellianism, vividly depicts the process by which the system grinds down individuals and destroys ethics. Following this event, she became trapped by the curse that “to survive, one must sacrifice others,” gradually sharpening her own egoism and instinct for self-preservation.

3. The Abyss of the Blackwall—Transhumanism and the Deprivation of the Flesh

Songbird’s true tragedy lies not in the ethical issue of her past betrayal, but in the ongoing “extinction of her own existence.” President Myers kept her close even after the Unification War, routinely forcing her to “cross the Blackwall,” an act strictly forbidden by international treaties and NetWatch regulations. This was to utilize the power of Rogue AIs lurking deep within The Old Net as strategic weapons for the NUSA.

3.1 The Price of Chrome: Transformation into a Walking Server Rack

What spreads beyond the Blackwall is an abyss of madness and data beyond human comprehension. As Alt Cunningham mentions, it is a realm where pure data engages in an animalistic struggle for survival, and if a flesh-and-blood human touches it, there is a high risk of their ego being devoured. As a result of diving into that abyss time and time again, Songbird’s body and mind began to suffer irreversible corruption.

Observing her body, the grotesqueness is obvious at a glance. The organic flesh from her back to the back of her head has been completely stripped away, exposing a glossy Chrome spine and complex neural connection cables (yellow wires). As pointed out in player community analyses, she is not something as mild as a “half-cyborg”; she is an entity whose entire body is almost completely mechanized.

When ordinary netrunners dive into the deep network, an ice bath or a specialized chair is essential to prevent overheating, but she lacks these. This is because her body itself has been modified into a “walking cooling system and server rack” to withstand the overloaded data processing of Rogue AIs and dissipate the heat. From the perspective of Transhumanism, Cyberware usually means “extension of physical functions” or “self-expression.” However, her Chrome is “infrastructure for the state to operate her as a weapon,” and there is absolutely no individual free will or aesthetic pursuit involved. She has literally been modified into a “consumable weapon” in human form.

3.2 The Weathering of Memories and the Death of the “Soul”

Even more severe than the deprivation of her flesh is the corruption of her mind. Every time the Blackwall AIs invaded her nervous system, her memories slowly faded away, replaced by AI noise. In the philosophy of life within Cyberpunk 2077, the “soul” is defined as “the accumulation of continuous memories and the continuity of the ego,” as can be seen from the structure of an Engram.

The process of losing memories and becoming ambiguous about who one used to be is equivalent to the slow death of one’s own existence. Her confession of “the feeling of slowly being taken over by something and losing a part of myself” expresses the ultimate terror brought about by the fusion of mechanization and AI. Her struggle to survive, relying on V and even making a deal with Kurt Hansen, was not mere biological life extension. It was a fierce, existential battle to “regain control of her soul while she was still herself.”

4. Project Cynosure—The Cage of the Abyss and the “Kidnapped Scientists”

The key to her salvation, which simultaneously serves as a symbol of despair, is the “Neural Matrix.” To understand the background of this enigmatic technology, it is necessary to unravel the history of Militech’s top-secret “Project Cynosure” and the causality hidden within its facility.

4.1 Anti-Soulkiller and the Weaponization of Rogue AIs

In the 2010s, amidst the rise of Arasaka’s soul-exploiting weapon “Soulkiller,” Militech sought countermeasures and constructed the “Cynosure Site C” deep underground in the Pacifica district of Night City. If Soulkiller was a weapon that digitized (killed) enemy netrunners, Cynosure was a superpower-level counter-weapon project designed to “capture and control Rogue AIs lurking beyond the Blackwall using an adaptive neural network, unleashing ultimate destruction in both the real world and cyberspace.”

However, due to the DataKrash in 2022, the very AIs they were trying to capture became uncontrollable, and the project was frozen. Later, in the 2060s, a Militech expedition team attempted to reactivate the facility, but it was abandoned once again due to the absolute danger of touching the abyssal AIs and the international political and military risks involving Arasaka and NetWatch.

4.2 The “Structure of Exploitation” Told by Left-Behind Shards

A shard left behind in the facility by Militech researcher Lisa Smith, “Notes: Lisa Smith,” contains the following record: “What we found here isn’t just a chance for a scientific and technological breakthrough. This bunker is like a perfectly preserved dinosaur egg. […] Are the Rogue AIs that the Cynosure netrunners once tried to hunt still here? Or are they trapped beyond the Blackwall, waiting for the moment someone reboots the core and crosses the forbidden boundary? I feel like an archaeologist prying open a digital tomb, on the verge of discovering a secret that will change reality forever.”

Even more important is a shard written by another anonymous researcher titled “I may as well have been kidnapped.” A scientist who was poached from Arasaka to participate in this Militech project penned the following anguish:

Deprivation of Freedom: “I wasn’t hired; I was kidnapped. I haven’t seen the sunlight in two weeks. It’s all for ‘security reasons.’”
Extreme Surveillance: “Officially denied, but my room is constantly monitored.”
Concealment of Purpose: “I’m being made to analyze algorithms, but I haven’t been told the full scope of the project. I only know that this is part of something massive.”
Deep Regret: “Coming here might have been the worst decision of my life.”

This composition of “having one’s freedom completely stripped away by a state or megacorp, being confined underground, and forced to develop dangerous weapons” perfectly aligns with the circumstances of none other than Songbird herself. The Cynosure facility functions not merely as a dungeon, but as a physical metaphor embodying the “structure of exploitation” in which her soul is imprisoned.

4.3 A Single-Use Panacea: The Irony of the Neural Matrix

The product of Project Cynosure’s research, which Kurt Hansen of Dogtown kept hidden, is the “Neural Matrix.” This is a matrix containing the algorithm of a Rogue AI, and by utilizing the extremely advanced computational power of this AI, it was believed possible to repair even the irreversible damage to the nervous system caused by the Blackwall (or the damage caused by V’s Relic).

However, there was a fatal fact. During the repair process, the AI trapped inside is completely consumed, making this a “one-time use” artifact.

Both V and Songbird were on the brink of death, seeking this sole panacea. Even though Songbird knew this fact from the beginning, she baited V with the false hope that “if we get this, we’ll both be saved,” and continued to use V for her own purposes. This thorough egoism of hers is the consequence of the trauma and survival instinct implanted in her on the maglev train during the Unification War—the drive to survive even at the expense of others.

5. Diverging Fates (Somewhat Damaged)—The Labyrinth of Memories and Self-Determination Named Death with Dignity

In the final stages of the story, V’s choices cause Songbird’s fate to diverge down two extreme paths. Neither path is anywhere near a happy ending, culminating in existential conclusions that question “the right to self-determination (freedom)” under extreme circumstances.

If V sides with Reed in the main job “Firestarter” and attempts to stop Songbird’s escape, feeling betrayed, she goes rogue, and the story transitions to “Somewhat Damaged.” Evading pursuit from the NUSA and MaxTac, she flees into the ruins of the Cynosure facility that sought to hunt her. Ironically, in the very facility Militech once built as a cage to capture AIs, her mind is completely taken over by the Blackwall AIs, and she falls into a rampaging state (Cyberpsychosis).

5.1 The Terror of Cerberus and the Projection of Memories

The Cynosure facility in this route is akin to a tour of hell depicting her deep psyche. The invincible killing machine “Militech Cerberus” roaming the facility is an entity combining her thirst for survival with the malice of Rogue AIs toward humans, relentlessly hunting the player down. This situation, where no attacks or quickhacks work and one can only hide and flee using stealth, is a game design that makes the player acutely experience “how powerless V and Songbird are in the face of massive systems (the Blackwall or the state).”

During the escape, V hallucinates holograms of Songbird’s past memories: an argument with her friend Lucas in a cramped Brooklyn apartment, the inhumane Cyberware transplant surgery by the FIA, and the voice of Myers’s cold-blooded orders. Having lost everything, as her ego dissolved into the sea of data, she tried to protect only the “memory of the Brooklyn apartment” as her final breakwater.

“Before everything sinks into darkness. Just for the last second, to know I wasn’t alone.”

5.2 “Death” as Proof of Existence

When V finds her in the deepest part of the core, she has been so corrupted by the AI that she no longer retains her human form, and has been physically fused with the facility’s systems. She understood that if she survived like this and was recovered by the NUSA, she would be eternally exploited as Myers’s “silent weapon,” completely devoid of her ego.

Therefore, she begs V to end her life (death with dignity). The act of answering this plea and turning off her life support (King of Cups) is tragic, but it is the “restoration of her right to self-determination.” Refusing to live as a state lab rat and choosing death by her own will. Just as Jean-Paul Sartre preached that “man is condemned to be free,” this conclusion—exercising the final freedom to “choose how to die” even in a desperate situation—is the ultimate embodiment of Existentialism in cyberpunk.

Conversely, if the choice is made to keep her alive and hand her over to Reed (King of Pentacles), she is recovered by the NUSA as a husk who has lost her ego. V receives the cure as a reward, but it is a life built upon the “complete exploitation of Songbird’s soul,” resulting in the most sickening (yet, for cyberpunk, the most realistic) ending.

6. Diverging Fates (The Killing Moon)—Flight to the Moon, Confession of Sins, and the Blue-Eyed Watcher

On the other hand, if V sides with Songbird and betrays Reed, the story transitions to “The Killing Moon.” The two shake off the fierce pursuit of the FIA and NUSA, aiming for the rocket launch terminal (Night City Spaceport) heading to the lunar city of Tycho.

6.1 The True Intent of the Confession and the Limits of Egoism

At the conclusion of this route, she is tormented by unprecedented loneliness and guilt. Inside the monorail car just before boarding the rocket, her consciousness fading due to extreme exhaustion and AI corruption, she confesses her greatest betrayal to V: “The Neural Matrix can only save one person. Only me.”

Why did she confess this fatal fact right on the verge of achieving her goal? If she were a complete sociopath and egoist, she could have just stayed silent, boarded the rocket, and abandoned V. But she couldn’t do that.

This is because she superimposed the image of Reed, who once tried to save her (and whom she betrayed), onto V, who whittled away their own life to protect her and mowed down countless enemies along the way. Or perhaps it was simply because she saw in V her own “desperate struggle, fighting frantically to survive.” Her confession was the final clash between the egoism of her survival instinct to “survive at any cost” and her humanity, which screamed, “I don’t want to betray someone who believed in me anymore.”

Even if V expresses anger here, saying “I can’t forgive you,” if the choice is made to say “Won’t abandon you,” she tearfully expresses her gratitude and departs for the moon. Her lonely soul, layered with countless lies, was slightly redeemed by gaining an understander in V—someone who forgave her and yielded their life to her, knowing everything.

6.2 Hidden Truths and Speculation: The Secret Maneuvers of Mr. Blue Eyes

Based on the facts up to the previous section, this section will speculate on the causal relationships behind the events, based on circumstantial evidence and hidden elements within the game. Was the flight to the moon truly a happy ending?

Item	Facts Explicitly Stated in the Game	Speculation Based on Circumstantial Evidence
Arrangements for the Flight to the Moon	Songbird reveals that the “proxy” who arranged the escape is a man in an expensive suit with blue eyes (Mr. Blue Eyes). Within the spaceport terminal, he can be seen observing V and Songbird multiple times.	It is highly likely that Mr. Blue Eyes himself is an agent of Rogue AIs beyond the Blackwall, or a secret operative of Night Corp. The AIs seek the information in her brain, and the lunar city of Tycho may not be a treatment facility, but a new “AI testing ground.”
Hidden Message Post-Clear	After clearing the game, a hidden recorded shard of hers is left at a specific location (where the van was parked). She confesses, “I’m a little jealous. I’ll admit I’m scared too.”	This indicates a fundamental fear that the treatment on the moon is by no means safe, and that her ego might dissolve into the collective intelligence of the AIs (death as a human). It is presumed that she herself suspected that Mr. Blue Eyes’s goal was not pure salvation.
Keepsakes and Cyberware	A few days later, coordinates are sent to V from an unknown sender, leading to a “Metal Pin” from the Tycho settlement and the iconic Cyberware “Quantum Tuner.”	Either her ego survived, or it was reconstructed by the AI. The technology beyond human intellect known as the Quantum Tuner (a highly advanced computational mechanism that seems to interfere with the timeline) can be taken as a metaphor that she has become an entity completely belonging to “the other side (the world of AI).”

Songbird stated, “They’re only interested in the secrets of the Blackwall and the NUSA that I know.” In other words, a despairing speculation arises: although she escaped the cage of the NUSA state, she may have merely stepped willingly into an even more massive and unknowable cage—the “network of Rogue AIs.”

After she arrives on the moon, all that is sent to V is an unsigned message that returns an error, a “Metal Pin” from the lunar city of Tycho, and the unknown Cyberware “Quantum Tuner.” Her living voice can never be heard again. Whether her “ego (soul)” was safely repaired, or whether it dissolved into the sea of the AI collective consciousness and transformed into fragments of data, the truth remains as unknowable as what lies beyond the Blackwall.

The only certainty is the message on the secret shard left near the van at the starting point of The Killing Moon: “You know how our story ended. I’m a little jealous. I’ll admit I’m scared too. But I need to trust you, and I do. If you’re reading this, it means my choice wasn’t wrong. Thank you.”

In her life, paved with calculation and betrayal, this hidden message alone was the purest, most human “outpouring of the soul,” devoid of any calculation of profit.

Conclusion: The Philosophy of the Fluttering Wings Left by a Lonely Bird

The story of Song So Mi in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty transcends the framework of a mere spy thriller, serving as a powerful antithesis to the “weaponization of humans” by massive capitalism and state power. Her life was the very process of how corporations and states exploit and consume an individual’s soul (memories, freedom, human relationships).

She is by no means a flawless hero. To survive, she deceived and used others, endangering countless lives. It is easy to hate her. But if we were placed in her position, could we truly maintain our ethics? For her, stripped of her freedom by the state, forced to betray her mentor, and continuously subjected to the extreme violence of having her ego devoured by Rogue AIs, “lies” and “betrayal” were the only weapons she had to protect her soul and assert her right to survive.

“Begging for her own death deep within the Cynosure facility to protect her dignity as a human.” Or, “Confessing her ugliest egoism right before leaving the atmosphere, leaving the judgment to another.”

Although the ending differs completely depending on V’s choices, the final decisions Songbird made in either case were desperate cries to resist the system and prove her own existence. To the fundamental question of this work, “Is the soul just data?”, her trajectory presents a single, unflinching answer: “The soul is the very will that, no matter how scarred and tainted, never relinquishes the right to self-determination until the very end.”

Every time they look up at the fictional moon floating in the night sky, the merc of Night City will remember. The figure of that scarred little bird who betrayed everything to live, and flew off into the pitch-black universe. Whether what she obtained was true freedom or a new cage, the answer remains submerged in cold Chrome and the sea of data.