The antagonist of the novel. She’s a Special who works for Special Circumstances, a secret police force of sorts that monitors uglies’ antics within the city and also tries to infiltrate the Smoke. Though Dr. Cable is inarguably beautiful, she looks cruel and terrible to Tally: she’s too tall, too strong, has flat gray eyes, and seems incapable of flashing a genuine smile. As Dr. Cable’s primary goal is to infiltrate and put an end to the Smoke, she’s willing to blackmail young people like Tally into helping her; Dr. Cable is a cunning individual who understands how to manipulate others’ desires and fears to get what she wants, so it doesn’t take long for Dr. Cable to convince Tally to help out Special Circumstances. Interestingly, however, Dr. Cable suggests that Tally did have a legitimate choice in whether or not to help, suggesting that as a Special who’s fully in control of her mind (she doesn’t have the brain lesions most pretties do), Dr. Cable may have a greater awareness of how society works than an ugly like Tally does. However, without the perks and features of her office that allow Dr. Cable to detect when people are lying, she is susceptible to being tricked: Tally is able to trick Dr. Cable into letting Tally go outside, which allows Tally to escape and eventually rescue her friends from Dr. Cable at Special Circumstances. Dr. Cable is a fundamentally unethical person. She forces Shay to undergo pretty surgery to stop Shay from fighting, and she also subjects Az to a medical experiment that kills him. Her goal was to keep Maddy and Az from talking about the brain lesions that result from the pretty operation, so she attempted a procedure that would alter Az’s memory. Her overarching goal, in other words, is to do anything necessary to preserve life in the city as it is and stamp out anything different, individualistic, or that might complicate how life in the city is “supposed” to be.
