Episode 45

With the second bus still missing, the SSS is held back from any assault, frustrating its captain. Billy Squire manages his young hostages with unexpected care, letting them take supervised bathroom breaks outside, while Byron Blackbell and Martha reach the perimeter and confer with Henderson. When the police arrange a food delivery on the condition a teacher hands it out, Henderson boards the bus, then bargains his own freedom away so the injured dorm tutor Austin can receive treatment. Seated among the hostages, he spots the collars on Anya and Damian and glares at Billy in open disgust. Probing the hijacker's soft looks toward the children, Henderson appeals to him as a parent, and Billy reveals the wound driving him: his daughter Biddy belonged to the Red Circus when it was still a peaceful student movement, and the state killed her during a violently crushed protest. Marked by the SSS afterward, he accepted the radicalized group's protection and inherited its rage.

Across the city, Yuri locates the warehouse concealing the second bus and leads a raid that wipes out its guards. Bruce tries to retreat toward the children to use them as shields, but Yuri brings him down, taking a bullet to the shoulder in the process. With those hostages safe, command at the first bus passes to the SSS captain, who announces the other hijackers' deaths and sets a dawn deadline for surrender. Vadim, enraged, privately settles on a final option: detonating the bus with everyone aboard. Anya's telepathy catches the plan just as the SSS moves to raid the bus ahead of schedule. At home, Yor's calls to Eden and to her coworker Sharon leave her increasingly certain something is wrong.

Determined to stall both sides, Anya marches up to Billy and demands more rations. When he threatens her collar, she answers that she is not afraid, unknowingly echoing Biddy's parting words. Shaken, Billy rips the collar off and orders her away, but she refuses, sensing he cannot bring himself to hurt anyone in front of her. Asked why she is sticking her neck out for the other children, Anya echoes Loid's dream of a world where no child has to cry. The words unlock Billy's buried memories of Biddy feeding stray cats with their own food and telling him she was proud to be the person his ideals shaped. Admitting he clung to anger only to keep his grief from dissolving, Billy disarms his own crew, walks off the bus, and surrenders, claiming sole responsibility. Vadim makes a last dash with Anya as a hostage, but Martha drops from above, tasers him, and catches the girl. The remaining hijackers are arrested as the students pour out and the news blackout finally lifts.

Henderson exchanges himself for the injured tutor and becomes a hostage, while Billy's backstory reveals his daughter Biddy died in a state crackdown, reframing the hijacker as a grieving father rather than a simple fanatic.

Yuri single-handedly turns the crisis by finding and liberating the second bus, killing the guards and subduing Bruce at the cost of a shoulder wound. The rescue removes the Red Circus's leverage and triggers the surrender ultimatum.

Anya defuses the endgame herself: her fearless defiance and unconscious echoes of Biddy break Billy's resolve, leading him to surrender peacefully. Martha closes the incident by taking down Vadim mid-escape and catching Anya.

The episode covers the back half of Chapter 72 along with Chapters 73 and 74. The tutor is addressed as Austin by name, though the manga leaves him unnamed until Chapter 77.

Anime adjustments include the screen fading to red over Biddy's corpse, a pink cosmos flower beside Billy's family portrait, added shots of an aged Billy at the family home reaching out toward his daughter, and Becky hugging Anya after the rescue. Several manga beats are trimmed, among them Henderson's words when Anya refuses to leave and Billy asking whether she was coerced into demanding food, and Bruce keeps his hat and glasses on after Yuri's punch, unlike in the manga.