The Night the DCI Came for Me

For legal reasons, I will not mention the names of the companies involved. What I will say is this: I was young, underpaid, overworked, angry, and caught in the middle of a corporate war that was way bigger than me.

At the time, I was working as an intern for a tech company operating under a bigger business arrangement. On the outside, everything looked exciting. We were building a serious product, something that combined software and hardware. It had the kind of pitch that sounded futuristic. The kind of project that makes you feel like you are part of something important.

But behind the scenes, things were falling apart.

The company had been formed through a partnership between two powerful sides. One side was bringing in the money and business muscle. The other side was handling the technical work. On paper, it looked like a strong partnership. In reality, it slowly became a battlefield.

Money became an issue. Trust became an issue. Control became an issue. And when powerful people start fighting over money, ownership, source code, and responsibility, the people at the bottom usually become collateral damage.

I was one of those people.

For almost a year, I worked as an intern. But the workload did not feel like internship work. I was showing up, putting in effort, helping where I was needed, and doing real work for a company that clearly had money behind it. But my pay was terrible.

The worst part was the promises.

“Be patient.”

“Your raise is coming.”

“We’ll sort you out.”

“We appreciate the work you’re doing.”

Those words kept coming, but the money never did.

And that is what made everything more painful. This was not some broke startup trying to survive on dreams and Wi-Fi. This was a company backed by serious money. The kind of money that could fund big offices, serious operations, and ambitious tech products. But somehow, when it came to paying the intern properly, suddenly everyone became very quiet.

Then the hostility started.

I could feel it in the office. I could feel it in how people talked to me. I could feel it in how I was treated. I was not in the boardroom. I was not part of the partnership disagreements. I was not handling company finances. I was not making executive decisions. But somehow, I became one of the easiest people to frustrate.

The office was in Westlands. The entrance had a biometric fingerprint system and a doorbell. Every day, I would use my fingerprint to get in. It was such a normal thing that I never imagined one day I would stand outside that same door and realize I had been erased from the system.

Then came the incident that triggered everything.

It was around the 20th of...