Trust

Wounded soldiers litter the Interior Brigade compound after Squad Levi's assault. Dragging a captive outside, Levi opens his questioning about where Eren and Historia are being held. The man deflects, condemns the raid for catching mere servants in its path, and dangles an offer: surrender now and the surviving Survey Corps members, Erwin included, might escape execution. A kick that shatters his teeth and an arm wrenched until it breaks loosen his tongue, but he genuinely knows nothing; Kenny keeps his subordinates in the dark. The surname Ackerman attached to Kenny startles Levi, and Mikasa registers it silently. Sasha then catches distant sounds, and three armed figures in Military Police cloaks appear on the horizon.

A day earlier at the Stohess offices of Berg Newspapers, the journalist Peaure vents his disgust at printing fabrications that flatter the Military Police. Hange, sitting in on the conversation uninvited with Moblit at the door, admits to having planned to break the reporters' hands before overhearing their scruples. Instead, Hange asks Roy to print the truth for a single day.

The scheme plays out in Trost, where Flegel Reeves flees three Military Policemen into a dead end. Facing the gun, he demands to know why his father Dimo died, and the policeman spells out the whole affair, admitting the kidnapping plot and the company head's execution. Flegel answers that he stands where his father stood. Before the trigger pulls, Hange and Moblit drop from the building above and flatten the trio, and a crowd of Trost citizens pours out, every one of them a witness to the confession. Flegel plants himself on the downed policeman's head and claims the Reeves Company as its new chief, vowing to protect the town.

Watching from cover, Peaure urges Roy to publish. Roy breaks down instead, recounting a miner who dug beneath the Walls and was never seen again, along with every reporter who chased that story, and asks Hange what right anyone has to condemn his family to die. Far away in Mitras, a bloodied Erwin kneels before King Fritz and the Royal Government's assembly as a minister invites his final words.

Levi's interrogation confirms that Kenny's own subordinates are kept ignorant of Eren and Historia's location, and surfaces Kenny's family name, Ackerman, drawing Mikasa's silent attention.

Hange recruits the Berg Newspapers journalists Roy and Peaure to report truthfully for one day.

An ambush in Trost saves Flegel Reeves from execution and lets a hidden crowd hear the Military Police confess to Dimo Reeves' murder.

Flegel declares himself head of the Reeves Company and pledges it to Trost's protection.

Roy resists publishing out of fear for his family, and Erwin is presented, beaten, before the king and the Royal Government assembly.

Chapter 60 overall and the second of volume 15, this installment ran in Japan on August 9, 2014, one day behind its English simulpub. It belongs to the Royal Government arc, and before the volume release it carried the alternate title Flash Point (Hidane). The anime covered it in the episode Trust.

The chapter marks the first spoken link between Kenny and the Ackerman name, seeding revelations about both Levi and Mikasa. Its parallel threads, coerced testimony versus voluntary witness, set up the propaganda battle that defines the arc's next stage.