"Kookaburra sits in the ol' gum tree,
Merry merry king of the bush is he.
Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra,
Gay your life must be."

Junkrat's mind was lost in a fog of lingering pain, but even so, that song managed to cut through it all. He knew that old tune, though he hadn't heard it in years. Not since before everything went to hell, back when he still had parents. He could just barely remember the voice of the man who used to sing it to him when he was small, though he couldn't for the life of him recall his face anymore.

The voice that sang to him now was different than the one he remembered. It was a lot deeper, far gruffer, but soothing in its own right. Slowly, as the fog in his head began to clear, the new voice started overriding the old in his memories.

The first thing he noticed as he regained consciousness was the smell. The heavy, hot odor of leather, sweat, and some strange chemical bit sharply at his nostrils, the latter almost making him choke. When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring up through a pair of dark, wideset lenses.

The oversized mask engulfing his face occupied his attention for but a moment, as what lay beyond it proved far more intriguing. A large man loomed overhead, long silver hair falling down over his shoulders. Dark eyes stared down at him from a broad, pudgy face lined by black scruff that was rapidly turning gray, a faraway look fixed in them. Most prominent, however, were the intricate, swirling black lines tattooed across his cheeks, nose, and forehead.

Without even thinking, Junkrat lifted a hand up, the motion causing the man to abruptly stop singing once he noticed the boy in his arms was awake. He pulled a hand away from the mask, taking with it some strange yellow canister. He then sat motionless as the young Junker traced a finger along one of the swirls on his cheek.

"Cool…" he mumbled out, his voice echoing strangely behind that leather mask. Roadhog looked surprised at first before looking away almost bashfully. Still, he made no attempt to stop the boy from exploring his Ta Moko. He knew how rare they were to see, especially this far West away from New Zealand. Junkrat had probably never seen anything like them in his life.

Junkrat's curiosity certainly seemed to support that idea. He was absolutely enthralled by the facial markings, his finger slowly tracing over each swirling line one after the other. It was all that seemed to occupy his mind at the moment, even blocking out the lingering pain in his arm. It wasn't until he attempted to reach up with his other hand that reality started to finally penetrate through the haze of alcohol and Hogdrogen.

The boy's eyes widened behind the lenses of the gasmask as he suddenly found himself staring up at not his own right hand, but a feeble stump where it had previously been, all wrapped up in dingy, bloody bandages. All at once, the previous twenty-four hours came rushing back to him. The men at the bar, the ride through the desert. The pond. The Spider. The blood. The burning.

Junkrat filled his lungs with as much air as his battered body would allow, and released it all in one horrified scream.


"Oww! What the hell..?" Lúcio mumbled to himself as a sharp burst of static exploded in his earpiece, cutting through the constant droning of his music and making his ears ring slightly. It made him stop in his tracks as he traveled down the hall, his hand moving up to rip his headset from his face. He stared down at it until the static died down, his music retuning to the foreground once more.

The young DJ furrowed his brows down at the device, examining it in utter confusion. This hadn't been the first time that happened, though this was one of the louder outbursts his equipment had given him. He'd been getting interference like that for the past few weeks, though it mostly kept itself to background noise more than anything. Annoying, but not concerning. Not until the past few days.

At first he hadn't been sure if the static was growing in intensity or if it just seemed that way because he'd been noticing it more, but this pretty much confirmed the former. But why was that? He'd already taken his sonic amplifier apart twice looking for damage or defects, already screened the programing for bugs, yet everything seemed to be in proper working order. If it wasn't his equipment causing the problems, what could it be?

Lúcio turned down towards one of the lesser-used halls and sat himself against the wall there, replacing his headset over his ear once more. He was going to figure this out one way or the other. He could already hear the soft crackle of static behind his music if he listened for it. He started by cutting his music altogether. The static remained. Well, it wasn't his tunes getting corrupted. That was a relief at least. Of course, now that it was isolated, the static itself almost seemed to have a tune to it as well. Was he picking up an outside signal? That was odd. He thought he'd blocked out commercial radio wavelengths.

He then started fiddling with the tuning on his device, trying to get the signal to come in clearer. His equipment had never meant to be some glorified radio, but he did eventually get it to come through clearly enough to pick out muddled words.

'—ol' gum tree, merry—….. –bush—…. –ookaburra, laugh, Kookabur—'

The short burst of clarity in the signal only managed to raise more questions than it had answered. Why in the hell was he getting some old Australian nursery rhyme playing over his headset? Where was it coming from? And why was his the only device that seemed to be picking it up? No other equipment in the base was getting this interference, not even simple radios.

Lúcio was pulled from his thoughts when a few more coherent bits could be heard in the static. It wasn't singing anymore, just normal human speech, but it was coming through so sporadically that he could hardly tell what the voice was saying. His was clearly not the device this signal was intended for. Even so, he could tell a few things about whoever it was that was speaking now. It was a male voice, as was the one that had been singing earlier, though this one was nowhere near as deep. Even with the severe fragmentation, he could still pick out a very distinct accent in it. British? No, not quite. More like…

"Woah, hold on a minute…" he thought aloud, turning up the volume on his headset despite the grating static. If he didn't know any better, he'd swear that was Junkrat's voice. But that was impossible! He was still in a coma!

Before Lúcio could wonder further on what was happening, a new voice came through the static. This one was female. She, too, had a distinct accent, though a very different one. Perhaps… Hindi? It was at that point when Lúcio realized that he recognized this voice as well. It was a voice he could never forget, one that pulled him right back to his beginning days as a revolutionary activist in his hometown of Rio.

The answers came to him in such a flood that it practically propelled him back up onto his feet and back down the hall at a breakneck pace.


Symmetra let out an exasperated sigh as she marched her way down towards the Research and Development department for what felt like the millionth time. It was hard to believe she'd only been working on this project for a few weeks. It felt like she'd been diving through that maniac's brain for a year now. An unconscious shudder rippled down her body. Jamison himself wasn't so bad – once she'd established his more civilized persona, at least. It was his memories that made her skin crawl. The utter filth of that Junkertown place… Even if it was a simulation, she still felt like she had to shower for hours after having to go through it all, and from that grime-covered man's perspective to boot!

There was no more time to dwell on it for now, though. It was time to get back to work. She stood for a moment just outside of the sensor range of the simulation room door. Once more unto the breach, as it were. She took a deep breath, put on her usual confident face and stepped through the door.

"Good morning, Janesh. Is everything—"

Symmetra stopped herself mid-greeting as she entered the room proper and caught sight of her co-worker. Janesh was laying slumped over his console and snoring lightly. A small, displeased frown crossed her face. Of all the irresponsible… She marched her way over to him and gave his shoulder a firm shake.

"Janesh! Wake up!"

Janesh sat bolt upright in his chair, waking with a start before staring up at her with wide eyes.

"S-sorry! Amar didn't show up for his shift, so I was called in early. I hardly got any sleep."

Symmetra narrowed her eyes down at him, not entirely satisfied with his excuse. Besides, there was drool on the side of his face. It was unseemly.

"The simulation is not to be run without someone monitoring it at all times. We cannot risk the subject becoming aware of what's going on, not when we're so close."

"S-sorry, ma'am. It won't happen again."

"See to it that it doesn't." And with that, she made her way past his station and onto the projection pad in the center of the room. She could hear Janesh hastily typing behind her, followed by the hum of the simulation device below her as it warmed itself up to start. Just before everything whited out, however…

"W-wait! Something's wrong! Jump off the pad! Get ou—"

Janesh's voice cut out just as she turned back to look his way, but the sterile interior of Vishkar Corp. had already faded. What's worse, what replaced it was not the equally sterile walls of a Utopaea apartment building. The layout was the same, but the architecture was archaic and dilapidated. Garish floral wall paper, stained a rusty brown from what looked like years of water damage and neglect, peeled down off the walls to reveal rotting wooden boards. The window at the far end of the hall was broken, patched up with rusted scraps of corrugated metal wrapped in barbed wire. She could see nothing but a dismal gray sky through the gaps. A single, old-fashioned light bulb dangled from the ceiling by an exposed wire, it's feeble yellow glow made all the more uncertain by it's constant flickering.

Her entire body stiffened at once, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides. It hadn't been more than twelve hours since she'd last been inside the simulation. How could it all have changed this much in such a short amount of time? Furthermore, how did the security protocols not detect tampering of this magnitude and work to correct it immediately? Paralyzing though her current surroundings may have been for her, Symmetra willed her hand to move, bringing it up to activate her earpiece.

"Deactivate the simulation immediately! Pull me out of here! Janesh? Janesh, can you hear me?!"

Her near-desperate cries were answered only by a faint hum of static over the earpiece. Her hand slowly lowered from it, now trembling openly. She was cut off from the outside. But how?! How could it all have fallen apart like this so quickly?! Jamison had only been left unmonitored for a few hours at most! Could some bumbling idiot like that really be capable of interfering with such a sophisticated program, and from the inside? Her answer came in the form of a man's voice, sharp and grating, echoing through the dark halls of the building, singing slowly, viciously, and slightly off-key.

"Kookaburra sits in the ol' gum tree,
Merry merry king of the bush is he.
Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra,
Never shoulda fucked with me!"

The last line was hissed out with particularly strong malice behind it, enough that Symmetra took an instinctual step backward, as if her antagonizer were within arm's reach of her. It didn't help that she got a reaction to the move, as though the man really could see her genuinely frightened demeanor. A crazed cackle echoed through the building, sharp, loud, and forceful enough that it sounded a bit strained towards the end.

"Aww, what's wrong, Satie? Didn't yer mum ever tell ya it's dangerous ta go pickin' around in the head of a mad cunt?! You're in my world now, bitch!"

Symmetra clenched her jaw tightly as the madman's laughter continued to ring in her ears for a moment before finally fading away to an eerie silence. So it was him after all. That still left the question of how, though. It was a question that needed to be answered, and she was sure it would lead to some clue as to fix all of this. She took a deep breath, steeling herself against the unease and disgust still clinging to her. She just had to look around a bit. Surely there were some answers to be found.

She took an uneasy step forward, flinching as the floorboards creaked underfoot, a puff of orange desert dust scattering about from around her shoes. This really was his world now. Now that she thought of it, everything about this environment reminded her of the buildings she'd seen in Junkrat's memories of Junkertown, right down to the decay and layers of filth. Could this be a reaction to being forced into such an unfamiliar, sterile environment for so long? A pushback from his psyche desperately needing something familiar and controllable in a situation where he could control nothing? It was all speculation at this point, which could probably wait for another time.

She continued down the hall, working mostly from memory as she navigated the sporadic near-darkness. It was technically still the same building as before, but Junkrat seemed to have found a way to drastically alter the way the surface looked. Luckily he hadn't put any real barriers between her and where his apartment had been. In fact, as evidence by the sloppy yellow graffiti of a disturbing, grinning smiley face painted on his door, he didn't exactly seem that keen on staying hidden.

She reached out to take the handle, but hesitated before grabbing it. It wasn't the clear layer of rust and grime covering it – though surely that was a part of it. What kind of traps could a man like this have waiting for her in there? Explosives wired to the door? Or was he simply waiting on the other side for her? Then again, did it matter? What trap could he set in here that could actually hurt her? She might not be able to disconnect from the simulation right now, but at the end of the day that's all it was. A simulation. She wasn't really there. She couldn't really be hurt.

With this fresh assurance in mind, she pushed the door open and stepped into the apartment living room. It was just as run-down in here as it had been out in the halls. The light hanging from the ceiling barely worked, flickering ominously every now and then. The couches were faded and torn, rusted metal springs showing through a patchwork of sloppy duct tape repair work. She didn't dare look across towards the kitchen. What interested her immediately, however, was the coffee table in the center of it all. She walked around the couch to get a better look.

The rotting and broken wooden table was covered completely by dozens of scraps of paper. They looked as though they'd been arranged randomly and haphazardly, overlapping and set at odd angles to one another, much to Symmetra's distaste. Yet, even though it may have appeared a chaotic mess at first, a consistent design shown across the makeshift collage. It was an oddly abstract collection of geometric shapes drawn hastily in pencil and darkly filled in, creating something that almost resembled a blown-up image of random black and white pixels. At first, she was deeply confused. Why draw out something like this? Boredom? Or did it perhaps mean something?

After dwelling on it for a long moment, she nearly discarded the whole thing as the mad scribblings of a crazy man. After all, what else could it be? Except, just as she moved to step past the coffee table, she realized that the design looked very familiar. She'd seen something like this before. All over the place, actually, now that she thought about it. She looked back down at it, her eyes widening as she saw it from a slightly different angle. It wasn't random or haphazard. Far from it. Every line, every little square, was extremely deliberate in its positioning. She suddenly realized that what she'd been staring at was a giant, hand-drawn QR code.

This was how he'd done it. That crazy idiot had managed to draw a computer virus. It must have infected the system during one of the regular security sweeps. The computer, detecting a slight change, had scanned the image and immediately ran the embedded code the image represented. What's more, he seemed to have drawn it out modularly so the computer couldn't detect pieces of malicious code before it was finished, at which point he would put it all together to be read. She truly hated to admit it, but it was absolutely brilliant. She couldn't imagine having come up with such a method of attack were she in such a position.

"Dammit!" she hissed, dashing back to the table and hastily scattering the papers from it. As she did so, a mocking laugh rang in her ears.

"Ah-ah-ah! C'mon now, Satie! If you know what that mess is, then ya gotta know it's already too late for all that. The damage is already done to yer fancy li'l video game. There ain't nothing yer buddies out there can do ta help ya. It's just you an' me now."

Symmetra cursed under her breath, but she knew he was right. There wasn't much she could do about it but wait for Janesh and the others to fix the problem from the outside. She would be trapped in this simulation until then, or until they decided the project was unsalvageable and pulled the plug on the whole damn thing. Either way, there was just one thing left for her to do here on the inside.

She straightened up and turned towards the direction the mad Junker's voice had come from. She found herself staring towards his office door, which was left open just a crack. She headed for the door, throwing it open fearlessly and dashing in.

The office seemed to be more of a mess than all the rest of the building. All of the books had been torn down from the shelves and piled haphazardly on the floor below them. The walls, though equally as rotted out as all the rest, were unique in that they were also covered in the same graffiti she'd seen on the apartment door. The back wall looked as though it had been blown out, now patched up with splintering wooden boards. Most unsettling, however, was the room's lone occupant.

Jamison Fawkes was crouched on top of the desk, hunched over and grinning like a hungry ghoul. His eyes stared wide and crazed from behind the cracked, grimy lenses of his glasses. His clothes were torn and covered in filth, his lab coat now stained a dull, patchy gray. His hair was a wild and tangled mess, with patches now missing as though he'd yanked it out in clumps. She could just barely make out smears of what looked like blood across his head and hair, with smatters of it peppered on his clothes. Symmetra clenched her fists at her sides, trying not to let the man's sudden devolved appearance startle her too much.

"How long have you known?" she asked, keeping her voice as calm and even as possible. There was no dancing around the subject any longer. It was painfully clear that he was aware of their scheme. Junkrat let another burst of crazed laughter bubble up to the surface, shaking his head at the audacity of such a question.

"Yer kiddin', roight? I can't think of how you wankers coulda made it more obvious. I just spent… What? Three weeks? Three bloody weeks without a wink of sleep, and I ain't even a li'l tired! Now, I ain't a stranger ta insomnia, but I know my limits. I usually pass the fuck out by the end of the fourth day, yet here I am; wide awake an' not even a bit loopier than usual!"

The Junker paused in his feverish ramblings long enough to hop down off the desk and take a few steps her way. He then pointed an accusatory finger her way, at which point she noticed a drop of blood drip from the heel of his palm.

"An' then there's you! You come in 'ere an' ya feed me that damned tea of yers! Ya think I wouldn't notice those convenient li'l trips down memory lane I took, and only when you were around? I bet you were watching the whole damn time, weren't ya?! You sick fucks! You worm your way inta my head, poke yer way through all my fucking memories, probably laughing at me the whole fucking time, weren't ya?! An' you think I don't know what the fuck you cunts were lookin' for?! I might be mad, but I sure as fuck ain't stupid!"

Symmetra found herself stepping back as Junkrat became more and more visibly enraged the more he continued on his rant. She knew she couldn't be hurt here, but having a very angry, very crazy six-and-a-half-foot man stalking after you was enough to put anyone on edge.

"That shit you saw? That was fucking personal! This might sound a li'l clichéd at this point, but you'd better believe me when I say I've killed fuckers for less!"

"And just what do you plan to do about it? How are you expecting to kill me? I know for a fact there aren't any weapons programmed into this simulation. You're unarmed." Symmetra shot back, trying to sound as in control as possible even as her heart pounded away in her chest. Rather than becoming even more enraged at the taunting, however, Junkrat burst out laughing.

"Still haven't figured that part out, have ya? How do ya think I did all this 'redecorating?'"

Symmetra furrowed her brow at that. What did he mean? Was all this not part of the virus he planted in the system? Had he had the forethought to somehow program in a weapon as well? No, that was impossible. That code couldn't hold that much data. Junkrat seemed amused at her confusion, his grin widening. Then, he lifted up his right hand, showing her his palm.

Embedded into the center of his palm, blood still seeping from around the edges and down his arm, was the trinket that had been on the corner of his desk. It was only meant to display decorative light constructs, but it looked like he'd somehow managed to modify it into something akin to the photon projector she wore in the palm of her own glove. But that would mean…

"W-wait… you can't be suggesting that you made all of this out of hard light! Learning to weave constructs takes years of study unless you're some sort of prodigy! How could you have possibly learned while locked away in here?!"

Junkrat let out another amused giggle, bringing his hands together and miming the motions of a sculptor molding clay. The photon projector responded as it would if she herself was wielding it and, although his movements and gestures were far less elegant than her own, an object quickly began taking shape.

"Same way I learn anything; trial and error!"

There was hardly more warning than that before Junkrat lunged ferociously at her. She let out a shout, diving to the side to get out of his path of attack. She looked back up at the spot where she'd stood a moment before, just catching sight of the large knife that had embedded itself in the wall right where her head had been. The crazed man let out a grunt as he wrenched the blade out of the wall, turning towards her with a feral grin.

"Y'know, ain't often I decide ta take someone out without explosives, but what you did hit close ta home… 'bout as close as I'm fuckin' about ta hit you!"