Disclaimer: I do not own Uglies.

Dr. Cable's POV

For the next few weeks, I watched Shay. It seemed that she was becoming good friends with this girl. The girl's name was Tally, Tally Youngblood. She had never been one of the extremely tricky uglies, but she pulled a few tricks here and there. She desperately wanted to be pretty, I could tell by the way she talked to Shay. He ugly name was Squint. And she had the same birthday as Shay.

I had some special plans for Shay when she turned pretty. She knew too much about the Smoke, so I had developed some super lesions just for her. If all went as planned, she would remember nothing from the Smoke at all. They weren't perfect, but I hoped that I would have them perfected by September. All was going to plan.

But then came the day when everything would change.

I was sitting in my office the day I got the ping. It was from one of my sub commanders, and consisted of only 3 words.

"Boss? Shay's gone."

I closed my eyes as the fury raged inside of me. Gone! After all our work, she had slipped away! But that afternoon, I had an idea. I pinged Colin Feaster.

"Dr. Cable? What do you need?" he asked.

"Where is Tally Youngblood?" I asked in my grating voice.

"Youngblood? She's at the hospital. It's her 16th birthday," said Colin.

"I know how we can get Shay back. Bring Tally to headquarters."

"Do you think you can get her to talk? She may not know anything," said Colin.

I thought for a moment, and then I remembered how eager Tally was to become pretty.

"Oh, I think I can persuade her."