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With the raid on the Huge estate finished, Aramaki delivers a stand-down order to John Smith, who directs his people to recover the bodies of Patrick and his wife for later study. The chief then warns Motoko Kusanagi about a decision she is sure to resent. She parts ways with Standard, whose head has been loaded with invented fairy-tale recollections, and locks Batou's genuine pay and memories behind a password so the team can call on him again down the line.

Pressed for the truth about Huge, John gradually opens up and hints that others like him are out there. He identifies the group as post-humans, people with enhanced brains responsible for the Global Simultaneous Default that the public had wrongly blamed on the G4. Flown to a concealed installation, the team surrenders its weapons and powers down its cyberbrains before descending into a lab where scientists monitor a brain-damaged prisoner.

The captive, a former soldier named Gary Harts, is tended only by a nurse who lacks a cyberbrain, since any cybernetic contact would let him seize the person and the whole operation. Chris lays out his record: after murdering his wife, Gary broke into a military base and disabled its staff to fire a missile at Moscow before he was stopped. The squad hears that the post-humans may be aiming to topple the social order, though John rejects Batou's guess that they engineered the Sustainable War.

Kusanagi notices that a paper plane keeps drifting back to Gary's hand with uncanny precision. When the nurse retrieves the toy, he strangles her and breaks into the systems, unleashing a virus that had sat hidden inside his stored messages until the alarm set it off. As armed robots pour in, a curious Tachikoma links up and is compromised. Kusanagi and Batou barricade themselves with Gary, and with no way out John permits his death, which Batou carries out.

Directed by Tensai Okamura from a script by Harumi Doki, the episode carries the subtitle DISCLOSURE and premiered in Japan on April 23, 2020, with the English version following on May 3, 2020. It sits between Gift from God and First Bank Robbery in the 2045 season. The Tachikoma supply comic relief by passing themselves off as ride-share drivers, and the closing scene has Aramaki secure John's promise to hand over his full files on the post-humans.