Voices.

that wasn't right. He should've been dead. So why were there voices?

Cautiously, he extended his other senses, not opening his eyes.

He was lying face-down on a flat, cold hard surface in a chilly room. The air reeked of antiseptics. There were at least ten people in there, milling around and talking.

That all built up the image of a hospital.

Why would he be in a hospital?

There... There was something else as well...

Feathers. On his back. A carefully arranged mass of feathers.

Wings?

He took a deep and pushed himself up into a sitting position, opening his eyes.

"He's awake!"

The scars... The burns...

Looking at his hands...

They were all gone!

All the marks from his attempted suicide... were gone!

Now he let his gaze roam over the people there.

Far more than ten. A group of ten young men were lined up against the wall. All of them were due to die in seven years or less. The rest that were milling around all wore long white lab-coats. They were smiling, talking, nodding. A few gestured at him with a frenzied sort of happy energy.

He suppressed a shiver and twisted his head to investigate the feathers on his back.

It was wings.

Large. Bright red. Wings.

He extended one of them. This one alone was easily ten feet... A twenty-foot wingspan?... Bright red feathers carefully followed delicate curves and angles...

But why...?

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Beyond."

One of the white-coated people...

Jeb Batchelder... So that's your name...?

He accepted the bundle of clothes Jeb held out to him, casting about again. "Where am I?" he asked, eyeing the young men. They were all in their early twenties at an estimate...

"This place..."

He turned his attention back to Jeb.

"... is called the School."