khan metro is such a funny fucking character i love the sections of the games where we have to follow him for a while because 90% of the time hes just giving you wisdom about how the metro is alive or whatever and 10% of the time youre on some insane jackass shit
I kinda love that in the game the dark ones help Artyom pretty early on in metro 2033, however it takes over 11 chapters in the book for us to get some sort of narrative indication that the dark ones aren’t evil. But the way the dark one helps Artyom is the most unnerving fucking shit I swear it’s the first time I’ve felt properly unsettled by the novel.
I love how it’s written, because it’s only after the “horror” part of the scene is over that we realise the creature that was mimicking Artyom’s footsteps and repeating his words back to him in the tunnel was probably trying to communicate with him. Trying to help him. He hears a whisper right by his ear telling him to wait before he goes to the next station, and artyom just fucking runs, but he does stop for a minute, and it’s a damn good thing he did or he would’ve been gunned down in an ambush, but because something whispered for him to wait and he listened he arrived after the danger had passed.
And to be fair to Artyom, if I was alone and lost in a dark tunnel where I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face and I started to realize that the footsteps I was hearing were actually just a second out of sync with mine, only to realise that they were actually not my footsteps at all but were something coming towards me, and then I yelled who’s there only for it to echo “there there there” back at me, and then heard a voice whisper right in my ear telling me to wait I probably would’ve ran as fast as I could too.
Whatever was in that tunnel with him saved his life, but the chapter describing how it attempts to communicate with him is the creepiest shit I’ve read in a while. Artyom is so so scared, and he’s right to be, but he also listened, which saved his life.
I can clearly see the plot points the games took from the book regarding the dark ones. But the book does it so well because in the game the dark one physically saves us (that scene with bourbon) and the player might realise it’s trying to help artyom and that there might be more going on that what they originally expected. But the book dials the spook factor up to 11, so while whatever the creature is is trying to help artyom, all artyom feels while he’s in its presence is fear, and he only realises in hindsight that if he hadn’t followed some deep rooted instinct to trust what the voice said he might’ve died only one station away from Polis.
I’m so glad I discovered these games and subsequently this book, I never expected to become so invested but here we are