When Croy gives Tally the pills, Zane and she climb to get them, and when Tally is too scared to eat them herself, they each take one. He takes an interest in her because of her tricky Ugly past and urges her to remember running away to the Smoke. The morning after the party, Zane invites Tally to brunch in Denzel Park. When Tally launches herself at bungee-jacket-wearing Peris straight over the side of a balcony in a desperate attempt to escape the Specials following her, her status as a Crim clique member is secured. Zane, as leader of the Crims, votes in Tally as a member of their clique after an exciting party at Valentino mansion. He reformed the Crims as a Pretty clique and urged the members to tell stories about their tricky Ugly lives over and over again, naturally fighting against the lesions as they did so, although they didn't know it at the time. The guilt over giving up and betraying his friends kept him from succumbing to the Pretty lesions in his brain. Threatening to turn him into a cruel Special, he caved in and told them everything he knew about the Smoke and Shay, the one other Crim member who chose to stay in the city. But on his sixteenth birthday, he was interrogated by Special Circumstances. But when the time came to go, he couldn't bring himself to do it and instead chose to turn Pretty.

He told them about the Smoke, which seemed to be exactly was Zane was searching for. He tried convincing his friends without much success that living in the wilderness was possible until one day they met David. Knowing that Pretties never did anything as exciting as sneaking out to the ruins, Zane decided to run away from the city and live in the wild, at least for a while.

Out in the ruins, Zane realized how much bigger the world is compared to their tiny city. They did all the usual tricks, even sneaking out to the Rusty Ruins after some older Uglies showed them how. Zane and six of his friends including Croy and Shay lived in the same dorm as Uglies and called themselves Crims.

Uglies pretties and specials