Laboratory 5 Arc

The brothers discover the military's dark secret: a laboratory creating Philosopher's Stones using human lives.

The Laboratory 5 Arc is the first major escalation of Fullmetal Alchemist's conspiracy, the point at which the series transforms from a quest-driven adventure into something darker and more politically charged — a story about what the state is willing to do to its citizens in pursuit of power. The brothers infiltrate the abandoned Fifth Laboratory in Central, a decommissioned military facility that is anything but decommissioned. What they find inside is the horrifying truth about how Philosopher's Stones are created: not through some alchemical refinement of rare materials, but through the distillation of living human souls, each stone containing the compressed essence of hundreds or thousands of people who died in agony during the process. Ed battles the Slicer Brothers, armored souls guarding the lab — souls like Al's, bound to objects, but with their humanity hollowed out by what was done to them. Meanwhile, Barry the Chopper — another armored soul, a serial killer who met his end in the military's experiments — plants seeds of doubt in Al's mind about whether Al's memories are real or implanted by his brother. This psychological attack on Alphonse's already fragile sense of identity is one of the arc's most quietly devastating elements. The arc also introduces the full horror of the Tucker incident, in which a State Alchemist sacrifices his own daughter to create a chimera, demonstrating that the corruption of the military-alchemist institution reaches into private lives as well as government policy. By the end of the Laboratory 5 Arc, the brothers understand that their search for the Philosopher's Stone and the state's interest in the Philosopher's Stone are connected in a way that makes them complicit in the very system they want to use.