The Retainables
They started as five.
Fresh-faced engineering interns with crisp boots, all smiles and matching branded helmets.
But beneath those smiles were five people who knew one thing:
Only two would be retained.
Jules: Smart, calm, but quiet. The type who took notes during lunch.
Leo: Funny, charming, and dangerously likable. Everybody’s “guy.”
Tara: Sharp-tongued and sarcastic. Kept her files, and her enemies, in perfect order.
Ayo: The quiet genius. Built an automation model on week 2. Never bragged.
Mimi: Pretty, bubbly, and underestimated far too often.
At first, they bonded like any intern group does. Shared misery over boring trainings, group DMs filled with memes and side-eyes. Inside jokes. Lunch runs. Happy hour drinks. Then the email came.
“Retention Announcement will be made on the 12th. Two positions available.”
That was week 5.
Everything changed in week 6.
Alliances, Secrets & Petty Wars
Jules and Ayo became a quiet duo, data nerds who shared code snippets and debugging sessions. Tara started spending more time with the site manager, casually dropping technical jargon loud enough for others to hear.
Mimi? She played dumb. Let people talk around her, then repeated their ideas in meetings with better polish. She suddenly had coffee with the department head twice a week.
Leo? Leo made everyone like him, supervisors, janitors, security. He cracked jokes at toolbox meetings and helped fix the printer when it jammed. But he wasn’t just charming. He was dangerous with what he knew.
In week 7, someone sent an anonymous tip to HR accusing Tara of taking credit for a report she didn’t write.
Week 8, Ayo’s model stopped working right before his performance review. A critical line of code had been accidentally deleted.
Week 9, Mimi was caught in the office late printing “confidential documents” from someone else’s USB. She cried. Denied everything.
Leo brought popcorn to the HR office that day. “I just want peace,” he said, smiling like a saint.
Jules? Jules watched it all and said nothing. But everyone noticed he was suddenly getting one-on-one meetings with the senior engineer no one else could get near.
Week 10. Friday morning.
All five interns were asked to give a 10-minute presentation to the entire engineering team. Final impression before the decision.
Tara’s PowerPoint crashed mid-sentence.
Mimi’s report had a copy-paste error showing another intern’s name.
Ayo showed up late — his alarm “mysteriously never went off,” and his phone had been reset to factory settings.
Leo’s presentation? Smooth. A little too smooth. It included a graph Jules had been building privately for weeks. Jules didn’t say a word, he just stared at Leo the entire time like he was watching a thief wearing his clothes.
Then Jules presented. No slides. No animation. Just spoke calmly and confidently.
The room was silent.
⸻
Monday morning.
Two names were on the final email.
Jules. Mimi.
The rest were thanked “for their contribution” and “encouraged to apply again next year.”
Tara didn’t speak to anyone. Ayo just left the office without saying goodbye. Leo laughed and said, “I wasn’t even trying that hard anyway.” Then walked out whistling.
In the breakroom later, Mimi turned to Jules and said, “You knew Leo stole your work, didn’t you?”
Jules smiled. “Yep.”
“And you didn’t say anything?”
“Oh, I did,” he said, sipping his tea. “I emailed the director. With timestamps. Let them figure the rest out.”
Mimi burst out laughing.
They didn’t become friends after that. Not exactly.
But when HR called them in for onboarding, they sat next to each other in silence, two survivors in a war with no rules.
⸻
She just wanted to pass her exams. She never thought it would cost her life.
