Tally successfully finds a girl giving out pills which cure the pretty lesions, which she encourages the Uglies to take to the Crims - Tally and Shay's old clique. The Cutters disguise themselves as Uglies into order to crash a party in Uglyville and search for members of the New Smoke. They were adopted into Special Circumstances and given enhanced senses, strength and reflexes, and are among the youngest agents working for Dr. All of the specials in this group were able to get rid of the brain lesions on their own, and now live in the wild. The Cutters were founded by Shay, who invented the use of ritual self-harm to become 'bubbly' and clear-headed in spite of brain lesions used to make her pretty-minded. The third novel in the Uglies series begins two months after events in Pretties, when Tally Youngblood has become a member of an elite group of 'Specials' - surgically enhanced super-humans - called the Cutters. Specials also receive brain surgery to make them feel superior to others and have heightened feelings of rage and euphoria. Pretties who work for Special Circumstances, a clique which ensures the city's security, are given an operation to make them look terrifying, become very strong and fast, and have incredibly fast reflexes. Later operations follow to show signs of increasing age while maintaining their beauty, and the lesions may be removed for pretties entering careers which require quick thinking. Before they receive the operation, children are referred to as 'uglies', and are kept separate from their older friends. They are also given brain lesions which make them peaceful and compliant. At the age of sixteen, each person undergoes an operation which boosts their immune system and reflexes while giving them well-proportioned, symmetrical faces based on an international standard, so that all pretties look nearly identical. The survivors of this disaster established cities much smaller than those currently existing, each of which is independently governed with limited traveling. The Uglies series is set at least three centuries in the future, after current civilization was destroyed by a bacterium which de-established all petroleum products, causing widespread chaos. It continues the story of the protagonist, Tally Youngblood. Specials is the third novel in the Uglies series of novels, written by the American author Scott Westerfeld.

The specials scott westerfeld