It's only three days this time before he can return to Seth's cell, but it feels like it's been a month. And once he does he barely has enough time to swap out the encoded book for another, let alone have any kind of extended, stilted conversation. Daniel doesn't bother trying to be discreet about it, just treats the whole thing like an exchange between friends. That's what he's been telling them - that he's been making significant progress in establishing a more personable bond.
It's not entirely a lie, and they've believed him.
Daniel gets no sleep the night he shuffles through the book and starts picking apart the code. It takes longer than it should, but not as long as he thought it would; Seth picked a good pass phrase that might have elicited a smile were Daniel not so frenetic in deciphering whatever message he might have left.
He finds...a lot of unrelated information. It might have been three agonizing days for Daniel, but for Seth it well could have been weeks upon weeks, with no way to mark the passage of time. It's no wonder he filled the book with whatever he could. It must have been the only way he could occupy himself.
The stuff in there that is applicable to their current situation, however, gets put to good use. Daniel already has a half-formed map with the best routes to the surface on paper (still working on transposing that into his head, a slightly more difficult task), and has done his best to commit guard shifts and the more active hours to memory, but Seth's additional details flesh it all out considerably. He's not sure when he'll be ready to do anything about it, but the slow-burning progress he's been making doesn't feel like enough. It's killing him to have to bide his time like this.
No, scratch that.
It's killing Seth. Slowly and horribly.
Less than two days later, it turns out that none of it matters anyhow.
Less than two days later, Daniel hurtles down hallway after hallway, subterfuge out the window, cover about to be well and truly fucked, because he heard the noises from a distance and he recognizes the timbre of that scream and there's nothing that will convince him that his silence and cooperation is worth this, because nothing is.
no subject
It's not entirely a lie, and they've believed him.
Daniel gets no sleep the night he shuffles through the book and starts picking apart the code. It takes longer than it should, but not as long as he thought it would; Seth picked a good pass phrase that might have elicited a smile were Daniel not so frenetic in deciphering whatever message he might have left.
He finds...a lot of unrelated information. It might have been three agonizing days for Daniel, but for Seth it well could have been weeks upon weeks, with no way to mark the passage of time. It's no wonder he filled the book with whatever he could. It must have been the only way he could occupy himself.
The stuff in there that is applicable to their current situation, however, gets put to good use. Daniel already has a half-formed map with the best routes to the surface on paper (still working on transposing that into his head, a slightly more difficult task), and has done his best to commit guard shifts and the more active hours to memory, but Seth's additional details flesh it all out considerably. He's not sure when he'll be ready to do anything about it, but the slow-burning progress he's been making doesn't feel like enough. It's killing him to have to bide his time like this.
No, scratch that.
It's killing Seth. Slowly and horribly.
Less than two days later, it turns out that none of it matters anyhow.
Less than two days later, Daniel hurtles down hallway after hallway, subterfuge out the window, cover about to be well and truly fucked, because he heard the noises from a distance and he recognizes the timbre of that scream and there's nothing that will convince him that his silence and cooperation is worth this, because nothing is.