Hellsborough Exposed — hellsborough-politics

A council man named Mark Bell let himself into the flat one evening, sat down in the assessor's own chair, and explained the terms of staying comfortable. "The DPDC handles sensitive material. Some of it is not appropriate for Asset-level staff. Not because of clearance. Because of content. You saw what happened to the Resident who read their own processing log. We do not want that for you." — "I appreciate the concern." — "Good. Focus on your assignments. Do good work. Let the system take care of the rest."

From my research into Sophie Hinchcliffe's rise — the moment a remade shop girl walked into the council offices and sat herself in the CEO's chair:

"And whom might you be?" demanded Joshua P. Blenkinsopp, finding her at his desk.

"I am the new CEO of the Dark Peak District Council," said Sophie, matter of factly.

"The Council already has a CEO, and I am he — and are you not a little young to be bothering yourself with the running of local government?"

"What do you know, old man?"

From Dark Peak District Council records, recovered via a crosslander contact - a deregistration inquiry, late-stage: "Can I leave?" "Of course. You're not a prisoner." "The streets loop back. I tried." "The Boundary is not a wall, Mr Calver. You can leave. There is a deregistration process. Forms available from Janet." "How long does it take?" "The current processing time for deregistration is subject to review." "What does that mean?" "It means the duration depends on your classification tier, which depends on the amendment, which requires the form. Would you like to complete the form?"

Official Dark Peak District Council broadcasts advise residents not to engage with crosslanders on the grounds they are armed and dangerous — though the same broadcasts describe the crosslands as populated by "dissidents, mental incontinents and morons," which does complicate the threat assessment. Remain on the Hellsborough side of the Great Causeway, they say. Most do.

The netherlander resistance posits as fact that the elected members of the DPDC and its senior staff are Jellyheads — nascenti stooges, possibly replicants, revenant humans resurrected and animated by the fungal network. Whether any given individual is such a revenant is difficult to verify from the outside, since the principal diagnostic is an absence of likeable features — which covers too much ground to be useful. Jarv from the corner newspaper shop has been provisionally cleared.

Exacids are the enforcement arm of the Nascenti: biologically engineered crabs in bipedal form, heavily armoured, and not considered unusual by the human population of Hellsborough. They are not bright — this is almost certainly deliberate. They will attempt the same approach three times before pausing, and that pause is your window. What is not your window is the question of why an Exacid is there, which implies a Nascenti nearby that has decided not to show itself yet.