Operations are much faster when you work at the integer level. In particular, converting to a string as suggested here is really slow.
If you want bit 7 and 8 only, use e.g.
val = (byte >> 6) & 3
(this is: shift the byte 6 bits to the right - dropping them. Then keep only the last two bits 3
is the number with the first two bits set...)
These can easily be translated into simple CPU operations that are super fast.