Seth watches Daniel leave out of the corner of his eye. Then he swallows and takes a deep breath to steady himself, to pretend like nothing is wrong - or at least nothing related to Daniel.
He forces himself to open the first book calmly, gently flipping through as if merely checking it out. The message is surprisingly easy to find, which makes him worried - what if they had taken the book? It would've been no effort at all to notice the hidden message.
Seth picks up his pencil - thank god they let him have one. And he values it enough that he hasn't tried to use it as a weapon, though perhaps that's mostly because the few times he was stupid enough to attack someone, he wasn't really in his right mind.
He underlines letters at random, obscuring the original message, in case someone decides to check it. At least him scribbling in books isn't unusual behavior for him.
Then he has to wonder what to answer. He's not sure any of his escape attempts went remotely far enough that he could pinpoint just a few things that went wrong, things that could be fixed. But... he's got all the time in the world, and one of the books was pretty thick, a lot of room to plant code into. Might as well tell as much as he can.
And since he's got all this time, he's also able to come up with a better way to hide the message. Same basic principle, just underlined letters, except if you tried to read it regularly, it'd be nothing but gibberish. He writes down instructions for decryption at the front of the book, but anyone who tries will still need the password to know how exactly to decode it. Something no one but Daniel will know, and that he hopefully won't have forgotten.
And as the hint for the pass phrase, he writes; "How to summarise Gödel's ontological proof in Arabic."
It takes him a while to write down what he can about possible escape attempts, probable obstacles, secrets and paths that Daniel might not be aware of. He knows there's a way to get to the subway tracks one level up, that's what he'd been aiming for, but there's a lot standing between him and that.
And then when he can't think what else to write, and Daniel still hasn't come by, he starts treating the book almost as a diary. It becomes simple to write without even having to think much about which letters correspond to which as he slowly marks everything down. Having a one-sided conversation with Daniel.
How he took someone else's power, what it was, and who he had to give it to. How he wonders what the weather's like, what month it is, because it seems to be getting warmer, and is it spring already? How there's a hole in his sock and it's annoying him. How he had a dream where he knew he could fly, except instead he was weighted down with chains and sunk to the bottom of the lake. How much he wishes Daniel would come back soon.
no subject
He forces himself to open the first book calmly, gently flipping through as if merely checking it out. The message is surprisingly easy to find, which makes him worried - what if they had taken the book? It would've been no effort at all to notice the hidden message.
Seth picks up his pencil - thank god they let him have one. And he values it enough that he hasn't tried to use it as a weapon, though perhaps that's mostly because the few times he was stupid enough to attack someone, he wasn't really in his right mind.
He underlines letters at random, obscuring the original message, in case someone decides to check it. At least him scribbling in books isn't unusual behavior for him.
Then he has to wonder what to answer. He's not sure any of his escape attempts went remotely far enough that he could pinpoint just a few things that went wrong, things that could be fixed. But... he's got all the time in the world, and one of the books was pretty thick, a lot of room to plant code into. Might as well tell as much as he can.
And since he's got all this time, he's also able to come up with a better way to hide the message. Same basic principle, just underlined letters, except if you tried to read it regularly, it'd be nothing but gibberish. He writes down instructions for decryption at the front of the book, but anyone who tries will still need the password to know how exactly to decode it. Something no one but Daniel will know, and that he hopefully won't have forgotten.
And as the hint for the pass phrase, he writes; "How to summarise Gödel's ontological proof in Arabic."
It takes him a while to write down what he can about possible escape attempts, probable obstacles, secrets and paths that Daniel might not be aware of. He knows there's a way to get to the subway tracks one level up, that's what he'd been aiming for, but there's a lot standing between him and that.
And then when he can't think what else to write, and Daniel still hasn't come by, he starts treating the book almost as a diary. It becomes simple to write without even having to think much about which letters correspond to which as he slowly marks everything down. Having a one-sided conversation with Daniel.
How he took someone else's power, what it was, and who he had to give it to. How he wonders what the weather's like, what month it is, because it seems to be getting warmer, and is it spring already? How there's a hole in his sock and it's annoying him. How he had a dream where he knew he could fly, except instead he was weighted down with chains and sunk to the bottom of the lake. How much he wishes Daniel would come back soon.