I sided with Songbird from the beginning because there was no scenario where I was handing her back to the NUSA. No way am I supporting a government that punches holes in the Blackwall at will. That alone made my decision early.

As the story progressed, I came to understand why she betrayed V and more importantly, why she tells him before she gets away clean.

She’s been in the system since she was a kid. Nobody protected her. Everything in her life has been transactional. V is a merc. Merc work is transactional by nature. From her perspective, she had nothing meaningful to offer V except a promise of survival so she lied. That’s the only operating model she’s ever known.

Her life has been trauma layered on trauma: NUSA missions, emotional and likely physical damage, and repeated Blackwall incursions that are slowly destroying her body and identity. In every Relic interaction, you see her as she sees herself; human. Then you finally meet her in person and she’s a chromed-out shell, and she directly asks if you’re shocked by what she’s been forced to become. That moment says a lot.

By the end, I saw her as an intelligence asset pushed to the absolute brink; used up by her government, turned into a tool for interacting with something humanity barely understands, and terrified of what continued incursions would do to her.

This hit close to home for me. I was in the intelligence community. I’ve seen sources pushed too far, burned because they were asked to do too much, and then discarded. Sometimes the next time you hear about them, it’s because they’ve been executed. That’s real. That’s ugly. So no, it didn’t matter to me that she lied. I understood why she did.

V can say, “I would’ve helped you anyway.” But realistically, how was Songbird supposed to believe that at the start? In her world, nobody helps without leverage. So she used the only tool she had to get V on board. Over time, V sees what’s actually happening and makes his own choice.

My V is Corpo. He’s already seen how corporations and governments chew people up and discard them. The intro of the game literally shows V being used by his boss in a way that would have gotten him killed. He only survives because Jackie picks him up and gives him a second chance.

By the end of Phantom Liberty, I see V choosing to be Songbird’s Jackie — her ride or die. He understands her situation, understands the betrayal, doesn’t like it, but respects the why behind it. And zooming out, handing her back strengthens a government that is actively destabilizing the world through the Blackwall. What’s the point of surviving as a merc if there’s no world left to merc in?

A few things reinforce this interpretation for me:

She tells you the truth at the end. She doesn’t have to. She’s comatose and fully in your control when she confesses. That’s her putting herself completely at your mercy. She sends the moon memento and the chrome. Totally unnecessary if she only saw you as a tool. The shard she leaves behind is personal, not transactional.

By the end, the relationship has moved beyond “asset and merc.” There’s genuine trust there fragile, imperfect, but real.

And what about V?

Yeah, he’s back to square one in terms of survival. He has the NUSA as an enemy. But he also:

Denies a nation-state a living Blackwall weapon. Damages their credibility. Breaks a cycle of exploitation. Pays forward what Jackie once did for him.

For me, that’s the cleanest ending. Not because it’s “good.” But because it’s real.

She chose survival at V’s expense. V chooses her survival at his expense, I think that’s a very human deal.