Probably safer to double quote it, as it contains special characters.
echo "$var" | cut -c10-12
You could also use the shell's substitution facilities.
# Pluck off first ten characters
tmp1=${var#??????????}
# Now take another two
tmp2=${tmp1#??}
# Now trim everything after those two
var1=${tmp1%$tmp2}
This probably breaks if you have a too short string (but then so does the cut, albeit in a different way).
The variable substitution technique can be used just like I showed you above.
# Pluck off last two
tmp1=${var%??}
# Now return just the last two
var1=${var#$tmp1}
If the variable var contains abcdef then tmp1 will contain abcd, and in the final step, we trim off the value of tmp1 from the beginning of var, leaving ef
(Unclear whether you mean "take away" or "extract" the last two, but, well, this demonstrates both.)