Code of Honor

Hagan and Kamran move to a room full of computer monitors to watch Darius’s videos. Kamran is thrilled to have a soda and a bag of chips, something he never expected would mean so much a few weeks before, when “‘living large’ was dancing with Julia Gary and going to the Super Bowl with Adam” (78). Hagan helps Kamran decipher Darius’s finger-wagging in the first video by translating the wags into audible knocks, similar to the code Darius and Kamran shared as boys. Kamran realizes the code means that their mother and father are coming, another way of Darius communicating that there was danger on the way.

Hagan and Kamran then watch Darius’s Sith Lord comment, the one Kamran had already deciphered to mean that Darius was being brainwashed or forced to act against his will. Hagan explains the genius behind Darius’s actions: he chose to use an unbreakable code, one that only he and one other person in the world could understand. This, Hagan tells Kamran, might be helping Darius convince his captors that he believes in their mission.