The book uglies is set 300 years in the future where everyone has to get a surgery to become pretty at sixteen and Tally Youngblood cant wait to for the operation. But then her friend Shay disappears to the smoke and Special Circumstances thinks Tally knows where she is, so Special Circumstances tells Tally to follow Shay to the Smoke and betray her friend or remain ugly forever. Tally follows Shays instructions to the Smoke and decides to become a Smokey once there and destroys the tracker. But Special Circumstances comes along and destroys the life that Tally created in the mountains and the Smoke. They think the the rebels are destroyed but they are wrong, it still lives on in Tally and a few others in the next book Pretties.