Chapter 30: The Truth Inside the Armor

Outside the sealed alley to the Devil's Nest, Bido spots soldiers in town and dreads that they have come to hunt the chimera. In the tunnels, guards standing over the fallen are stunned when Loa and Dorchet rise again, cut them down, and vanish into the passages. Alphonse sits bound with Martel inside him until Greed reappears, trailed by Führer President Bradley, who runs the homunculus through once more. Loa and Dorchet find the group and break Alphonse free, urging him to carry Martel to safety before they turn to face the Führer. Martel struggles to escape and help her comrades, but Alphonse holds her in as she is forced to watch Bradley slaughter them, and to see Greed struck down yet again.

When Bradley approaches to check on Alphonse, Martel seizes control of the armor's arms and throttles him. The Führer drives his blade through a gap in the plating, killing Martel inside, and the sensation of her dying triggers Alphonse's buried memory of the night the brothers tried to revive their mother. Having now glimpsed the Truth, he blacks out.

Alphonse wakes to Edward shouting at him, with Armstrong having already opened the armor to remove Martel's body. Devastated that he could not save her, Al breaks down. Before the brothers leave, Bradley questions whether they surrendered anything to Greed, and Ed insists they gave up no military or alchemical secrets. When Bradley probes the link between Ed's arm and Al's armored body, Edward refuses to answer, and the Führer sends them off. Back at the shop, Alphonse tells Ed his memory has returned, and the two puzzle over Bradley's choice to slaughter rather than capture, and his decision to lead the raid himself.

In Central, Riza Hawkeye is stalked on her first day off by Barry the Chopper, also known as Number 66, who offers to walk her home before swinging his cleaver. She empties a revolver into him, then an automatic pistol pulled from beneath her skirt. When he removes his own head to reveal an empty animated suit of armor, Riza remains unshaken and reveals she knows Alphonse, prompting Barry to grow smitten, and she phones Roy Mustang to collect her prisoner. The chapter establishes that blood sacrifice paired with alchemy is what grants a vision of the Truth, and that Barry was supposedly an executed criminal who somehow became Number 66.