Jim O'Toole

"Jim, can you get me a prime cut from the icebox? We have to fill that lady's order now."

"Sure." Jim opened one of the iceboxes lining the kitchen's back wall and reached in to grab a New York steak when suddenly he heard an explosion outside the walls. Screams and angry shouts filtered in through the thick tiles. He straightened up, an odd look on his face.

"What the heck?" he asked.

He peeked back around the corner where the kitchen staff had stopped doing what they were doing and looked at each other, unsure, frightened, and confused.

"Everybody, just stay calm," ordered Barry. "We'll just go out and make sure everybody is…"

Brenda burst in from the cocktail lounge.

"BARRY!! GET THE REGISTER FROM THE BAR!"

"What?"

"We're under attack! Get the register!!"

"What? Attack? By whom?"

"I don't care! Just get the money!"

"Thank God there's no gun control down here."

Barry pulled a pistol with an oversized clip and ammo accelerator out from under his apron and charged out of the kitchen. Jim stood frozen in place. Barry suddenly burst back into the kitchen carrying a register under one arm and firing his custom pistol with the other.

"They're coming!" he shouted. "They're freaking coming and they're coming on heavy!!"

He dashed toward Jim, hoping to hide the register behind the partition that divided the iceboxes from the rest of the kitchen.

"Jim, hide!" he shouted.

Jim didn't need a second order. Almost instantly the kitchen door was bashed in. Obviously the "Employees Only" signs in front of it had failed to keep the attackers away. They flew in, firing their pistols. Cooks and runners screamed and cried for help as bullets ripped through the air. Jim only saw a brief glimpse of the assailants as they blew their way in and took down Carl before he dropped the steak and ran behind the partition. Barry fired into the assailants from that position, dropping a few of them as Jim opened and dove into the far icebox. He held the door slightly ajar, hopefully not enough to be perceptible but enough to not get sealed in. The cold of the ice bit into Jim as prostrated himself on it. It felt like a billion freezing needles piercing his skin.

"Too cold. Too…too cold," he grimaced.

Outside he heard the dull ring of shots, the muffled sound of a scuffle, a thud, the ching of a register opening up, and scurrying, laughing footsteps as some victorious attackers raided it. The ice continued to bite into him. He shut his eyes. He could still hear footsteps as they rummaged around outside. How long until they found him?

"Can't…"

Jim felt himself begin to enter shock.

The footfalls continued outside.

"Can't…"

The attackers moved away. Jim exhaled painfully and opened the door just far enough to stick his head out. He lay that way for a long time. The sound of footsteps leaving the kitchen and the pandemonium in the restaurant registered distantly on Jim's radar.

I have to get out of the icebox, thought Jim. If I don't, I'll get hypothermia.

Yet inertia kept him deadbolted to his current position. His body refused to let him move, partially due to the cold, and partially due to the shock at the sudden, furious chain of events.

Gotta move!! Gotta move!! I am NOT going to die here!

With that, Jim found the willpower to get his grudging body to move. He slumped out of the icebox and onto the floor. He looked up. He could just make out a male figure holding a cash register tight to its belly. A customized pistol lay just a few feet away.

"Barry?" said Jim anemically. "Barry, come on, get up."

He shook Barry with the little energy he had, but Barry wouldn't move. Jim had to accept the fact that what people on the surface called Barry's soul had fled its mortal cage. Jim collapsed on the floor again. He was sleepy, and his body was doing its best to knock him out.

No, uh-uh! thought Jim to himself. No, I'm not falling asleep. If I do, I don't wake up again. I have to...keep moving.

With a lot of effort, he crawled over to the corner of the partition on his elbows and chest. Then, grabbing the corner, he hoisted himself up. He slapped himself on the face several times to wake up. Noticing a New Year's cake sitting on a nearby counter, Jim staggered over to it and devoured it for energy. He then leaned against the counter. Outside he could hear nothing, except a very faint groaning and some slight vibrations coming from far away.

I have to get out of here.

Jim stumbled over the corpses of his coworkers. Brenda's silent form lay near the door. While Jim didn't know it, she had survived with only bullet injuries, as had Charlie and the voice actor out near the bar. As Jim walked towards the door, he regained most of the control of his legs, so they didn't feel like jello anymore as he stepped into the cocktail lounge. As soon as he did, he tripped over the body of an attacker Barry had dropped. As soon as he regained his balance, Jim examined the body. It was that of a rather heavyset man with overalls, a workman's cap, and a short tawny beard. Another similar body lay just a foot away, and still another a short distance from that. Their weapons, such as small pistols and homemade grenades, were scattered about them along with a few odds-and-ends and pep bars.

"Dockworkers," said Jim to himself.

He walked out from behind the staircase to take in the full panorama of the Kashmir's bottom floor. Jim realized that he was looking out over a massacre. The lights were completely out. The bodies of several bankers and two bartenders were scattered about the cocktail lounge. The dance floor was pock-marked with scorch-marks where grenades had detonated. Bodies of patrons, some still wearing their masks and others burned completely, were strewn out from the blast radii. Down in the dining room underneath the statue of Atlas, diners sat either slumped over at their tables or prostrate on the floor. The stench of burnt carpet and bodies intermingled with that of cigarette smoke. Upon taking this in, Jim rushed for the bar and did the only thing an 18-year-old who had seen this and lived in a city with no legal drinking age could do: grabbed a bottle of Chechnya Vodka and downed part of it. He dropped the rest. In all of this, Jim had forgotten the faraway groaning and vibrating he had experienced in the kitchen. All of that suddenly came rushing back to him as he felt the room shake with a deep groan. A new stench, some sort of pheromone, stung the air. He snapped his head up to look in the direction of the sound. A Big Daddy lumbered down the staircase. Neutral green light emanated from the numerous portholes on his mask. He groaned as he walked, his big drill swinging from his right arm and his heavy metal boots making big clanking vibrations whenever they landed on a surface. In front of him, Jim saw two pin-pricks of orange light. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see the outline of a dark-haired little girl wearing a faded purple dress. In her right hand was a large hypodermic needle. A glowing red collection chamber hung off the end of it.

"Approaching a Little Sister is a criminal offense. Do not approach the Little Sisters."

The chilling female voice came over the P.A. System, seemingly addressing itself only to Jim. The announcement repeated three times for emphasis. As it did, Jim watched the Little Sister jump from the bottom step onto the blood-red carpet and look around her.

"Wow, Mr. Bubbles! Look at all these angels!"

Given the Little Sister's disheveled and eerie appearance, Jim was surprised she sounded so normal. The unaffected quality of her voice struck a chord in Jim's memory. The Little Sister's voice was inflected with just a hint of a Romanian accent. The last time Jim had heard that voice was four months ago.

"Masha?"

Masha turned her head at the sound and focused on Jim with her two bright orange eyes. Her Big Daddy heard too. He instantly stopped acting so lethargic and, surprisingly quickly for a person in such a bulky dive-suit, rocketed down the stairs and put himself in front of Masha. He roared angrily at Jim, hoisting his right arm up and spinning the big drill on its end to life. Jim clapped his hands over his mouth and prostrated himself against the wall. His eyes widened into big puddles of fear.

"It's all right Mr. Bubbles," said Masha calmly. "He's not hurting us. Let's get back to work."

The Big Daddy acquiesced, deactivating his drill and lowering the aggression in his groaning.

"But," added Masha. "If he comes any closer, take care of him."

The Big Daddy turned towards Jim as a warning and then backed away as Masha went to her work. Jim watched in a lurid fascination as she plunged her needle into the nearest corpse, extracting blood from it. Inside the needle, a special filter separated the plasma, platelets, erythrocytes, and leukocytes from what was truly desired: the ADAM. Masha finished one extraction and then turned the needle up so the collection chamber drained its red contents into her mouth. When Masha was finished ingesting the ADAM, she repeated the process.

"I'm a good girl Mr. B!" she said happily.

Jim stood there against the wall for a long time, watching but trying not to absorb what Masha was doing to each and every corpse she came across. He hoped that Mr. and Mrs. Lutz never got to see what had become of their daughter. All the while her Big Daddy trailed her closely, looking around for any possible signs of danger while keeping a close eye Jim. Every once in a while Masha would say something like "Hop hop Mr. B!" or start singing to herself. As she and her Big Daddy began operating on the far side of the room near the stage Jim could hear a sound different from Masha's needle plunging into a body, the Big Daddy's groaning, or Masha's little coughs each time she ingested the ADAM. He could hear crying.

"Is that Masha?" he asked himself. He focused in on the sound. It didn't sound like it was coming from the stage, but rather from the dining room. He looked over that way. Underneath one table where a woman sat with a hook impaled into the back of her head, Jim could see the outline of a small girl sitting near the corpse of a man. Her little body shuddered each time it shed tears. Jim automatically knew that he should help that little girl.

Then something stopped him.

"The parasite has his eye on Rapture. Keep YOUR eye on the parasite."

That announcement had been haranguing Rapture ever since Jim was born. It had been played so often it had become ingrained in Jim's head. He barely even heard it anymore when it came over the P.A. System. It only came back to him at times like this. He remembered what the men upstairs had been talking about while he had been cleaning their ashtray. Altruism, the guiding moral principle of the parasite vs. rational selfishness, the guiding moral principle of Rapture. Jim lived in Rapture, and thus his highest good was supposed to be whatever benefited him the most. He remembered then what Masha had said to her Big Daddy: "If he comes any closer, take care of him." Jim saw where the crying girl was, and knew that if he went over that way he would definitely be getting closer to Masha. If she noticed, Jim would quickly find a Bid Daddy drill lodged in his chest.

What's the point of trying to rescue that girl if I'd only get myself killed? Jim asked himself. Besdies, even if I did successfully rescue her, her parents are dead. What's to stop anybody from turning her into a Little Sister? She'll be no better off than Masha if I save her. But…

Jim realized that his second reason for not trying to save that girl, meant to reinforce his first reason, cut both ways. If he did save her, she would likely be turned into a Little Sister. But if he didn't, she would either die here or would be turned into one later anyway. If he did save her, at least she would have a fighting chance at survival, and maybe even a chance to avoid disappearing into Point Prometheus. Jim then knew what was right. There had only been two things keeping him pinned to the wall: Ryan's philosophy and the Big Daddy's drill. Jim had broken the chain of the first one, which in turn freed him from all fear of the second. He knew that even if what he was about to do wasn't right by Ryan's standards, it was right by some overarching, more natural standard. He stepped away from the wall.

Jim edged along the bar, keeping himself as far away from Masha as possible. There was no point in heroically striding across the room, because that wouldn't help the crying girl at all. Jim crept down the dining room steps, keeping his back prostrate to the wall, and then around the curve of the window. Eventually he made the loop around the tables, bodies, and the statue of Atlas to where the crying girl was sitting next to the corpse of who was presumably her father. Jim knelt down by the girl.

"Hey there," he said in as soothing a voice as possible. "What's wrong?"

The girl looked up at him with wet eyes. "My daddy," she choked silently. "They did something to my daddy, and now he won't move. Neither will mommy."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I was eating my cake, and then there were loud noises and people screaming. Daddy put me on the floor. All I remember after that is a long time when I was afraid. Now it's quiet, and daddy won't move."

"I'm sorry," said Jim. "Well, my name is Jim. I work here. I washed the same plate your cake came on tonight."

The girl wiped her eye. "My name is Kate. Can you…can you help my daddy?"

"No, I'm sorry," said Jim. "But I can help you. You see those buildings outside the window?"

"Yes."

"That's the Medical Pavilion. It's safe there. There are doctors and people who will help you. If you let me, I can help you get over there."

"I don't like it there," said Kate. "That's where daddy takes me to the dentist."

"Well, I'm not taking you to the dentist," said Jim. "Just to where we can get some help. Besides, wouldn't you rather be there than here."

"Well…yes," said Kate.

"Great," said Jim. "Now, come on, did your dad ever give you a piggy-back ride?"

Kate shook her head.

"Okay, I'm going to keep kneeling down. You just walk around me, wrap your arms around my neck, put your legs out so I can hold them, and I'll get you up to Medical. And whatever they ask you there, say that you're my little sister."

"But I'm not," said Kate.

"I know," said Jim. "But trust me, if you do, things will turn out better."

Kate nodded and obeyed. With her safely perched on his back, Jim walked towards the staircase. That was when he heard a groan. It wasn't from the Big Daddy, but from a distinctly feminine source nearby. Jim looked down on the floor next to him.

"There, there!" Kate pointed. A blonde woman was lying limply there. Jim recognized her from earlier.

"Ms. McClintock!" Jim whispered.

"Who?" asked Kate.

"Diane McClintock, Andrew Ryan's, um, girlfriend."

"Oh."

Jim knelt down, still holding Kate tightly.

"Ms. McClintock," he whispered. "Are you all right?"

He heard her groan.

"What…what happened?" she asked weakly.

"There's been an attack," said Jim. "I don't know who did it, I don't know why, but point is that you're all right. Can you walk?"

"I…I don't…I don't think so," muttered Diane.

"Well, then I'll help you up. Kate, can you hold on tightly while I help up Ms. McClintock?"

Kate nodded.

"Great. One, two, three."

Jim placed his arm under Diane's body and lifted her up. Kate helped by grabbing Diane's fur muff and pulling up with her tiny hand. Within moments, Diane was up. Jim supported her with his right arm, carrying her limp and almost inchoate form across the dining room floor while Kate held on from behind. He made it to the opposite window, just as Masha and her Big Daddy rounded the corner. Jim stopped. Masha turned to look at him, as he did to her. She stared intently at him for a moment, then at the people he was carrying. The Big Daddy looked from Masha to Jim, his drill at the ready.

"It's okay Mr. B," said Masha. "They're not angels. I don't see any light coming from their bellies. He's just trying to help them. Let's just move on, Mr. B. I know they'll all be angels soon."

Jim didn't wait for another invitation. Masha may have talked freaky, but still what mattered was that she had given Jim, Kate, and Diane a chance when she could easily have ordered her Big Daddy to kill them. That was all Jim needed from his former neighbor. He made his way across the dance floor to the Footlight Theater marquee. However, the door wouldn't open. Jim noticed that it was covered in blood and blocked by several dismembered bodies. He ordered Kate to shut her eyes, and then tried to think fast. The halls around the Footlight were the only way to get to the Transit Hub that led to Medical. Was there another way to get into the Footlight?

His mind flashed back to just a few weeks prior when he had been cleaning the men's bathroom. A show at the Footlight had just ended and the audience was spilling into the Kashmir for drinks, refreshment, and bathroom use. A man who looked like a dockworker in Neptune's Bounty had stopped Jim as he mopped.

"Hey, kid, can you spare three credits?"

He motioned to the only unoccupied stall, the one at the far end of the men's room. Like all of the bathrooms in the Kashmir, access to it was granted only if the person would pay the seven credits to use it.

"I'm sorry sir," Jim had said, even though he had thirty credits in his pocket. "I'm not allowed to give customers money. It's restaurant policy."

"Well, you can give me a beer if I ask for it, right?"

"I can't, but if you went to the cocktail lounge and paid for one, yes."

"And if I asked for a cake I'd get it, right?"

"If you can pay, yeah."

"Well I'm asking for a bathroom, why am I not getting it?"

"Because you have to pay for it. I'm sorry sir, it's restaurant policy."

"Can I see your manager?"

"Sure."

Jim then remembered that the man got into a fight with the already combative Brenda, with a lot of words about what was a natural right and what wasn't were exchanged. Brenda, frustrated, eventually just threw three credits at the man and stalked off. The man then went into his stall, and Jim remembered that about four seconds later as he loaded copies of the Rapture Tribune into the news vending machine in the smoking lounge, the gas line exploded. In addition to taking out the toilet and the dockworker, it had driven that infamous hole into the wall that had irked Steve Barker to no end. As far as Jim knew, it still hadn't been fixed. That hole led directly into the Footlight, and if Jim could get to the stairs that led to the theater's main floor, he could get out and go on to Medical. Still carrying Diane and Kate, he labored up the stairs, through the body-strewn smoking lounge, past the corpse of a drunk in the men's room surrounded by his bottles of Old Tom Whiskey, and through the hole. Jim didn't look back into the restaurant that had formerly been his place of employment. Instead he stepped onto the rigging that supported the stage lights and continued on to the other side.

Five days later Jim and Kate left Medical. They had admitted Diane, and tended to Kate's minor injuries before clearing her. Jim and Kate had been detained in the Kure All Pharmacy, being interrogated separately about the events in the Kashmir that night. Jim was shocked to learn that the restaurant had only been one of six locations of bloodshed. There had been death all over Rapture that New Year's Eve. From the Kashmir to the Tea Garden to Athena's Glory, almost as many rioting workers had been killed as elites. Another bloody people's revolution to go down as such in the history books, Jim thought to himself. The cops, obviously rushed to figure out what had happened and too unstructured to check their records, believed Kate's story that Jack was her big brother and had been under his care that night at the Kashmir. They let the two of them go together. Now Jim, with Kate holding his hand, stepped out of the Rapture Metro bathysphere into Jim's middle class neighborhood, located between Olympus Heights and Apollo Square. Demeter Avenue had largely avoided any of the New Year's chaos, though its metro station and tram tunnels were being used as a triage area for victims of the attacks on Olympus Heights who could not be admitted to the overloaded Medical Pavilion. Jim led Kate past the doctors, nurses, policemen, rushing family members, and patients on stretchers, up the central stairs in his apartment building, and to his parents' front door. He knocked and was greeted by his mother who hugged him, overjoyed to see her son safe and sound. His father stood behind her, equally euphoric.

"Oh Jim, I'm so glad you're safe! Oh thank God, oh thank God," she said over and over again, hugging her son.

"Jim," asked his father as he approached Kate. "Who's this?"

"That's Kate, dad," Jim said. "Her parents were killed in the attack on the restaurant, and she had nowhere to go, so I helped her." He looked into his father's eyes as the man knelt down next to his new daughter. Jim spoke up again for emphasis, with a warm smile on his face:

"I helped her."