I've Awoken

With Suzuka hunting them, the Major's crew reverses down a highway in their van while Purin, having been hacked, remains behind. Ishikawa loads the Tachikoma onto a cargo helicopter and briefs the Chief, who relays the situation to Prime Minister Tate.

Tate reveals that SOCOM Two also wants Philip in custody, a request routed through the NSA and, unsurprisingly, engineered by John Smith, which exposes John as the hand behind the earlier attempt on Philip's life. Recognizing how tangled things have become, Ishikawa lifts off toward the Major with Saito and Boma aboard.

Boxed in when a tollway halts their retreat, the Major's group rams Suzuka's vehicle, wrecking both, then disarms her after a brief exchange of fire. Purin, dropped off with a few Tachikoma, rides in claiming to have a trick ready. Nearby cars begin steering themselves, throwing the team into chaos, and Suzuka seizes Philip until the Major intervenes and momentarily loses her own weapon. The arriving Tachikoma let a SOCOM team coordinate a delta strike, though Suzuka breaks free and is chased across the rooftops.

Ishikawa reaches the scene and cautions the Major about the SOCOM force just as a stealth jet drops two fully armed cyborgs in cloaked mode. Using flares to funnel the enemy, the Major and Batou switch to stealth to draw the SOCOM cyborgs out. Suzuka, wounded in the thigh by a Tachikoma round, is cornered by Purin, and both women's noses begin to bleed.

Back at the toll road, Batou and the Major drop one SOCOM soldier, and though the other fells Batou, Saito snipes it so the Major can cyber-lock him. Suzuka hijacks a passenger plane and aims it to crash on Purin, who overrides the intrusion and steers the aircraft clear, yet Suzuka still slips away. Philip surrenders what he knows about the post-humans and is led off by Pazu and Boma, while Tate and the Chief weigh the mounting American pressure and the need to root out spies. The episode is the fourteenth of SAC_2045, sitting between Silly Kukushkin and 1A84.