Quote Originally Posted by shadrak View Post
The heightened keratin 18 levels are a result of an inoculation process. Randy has some control of his original mental faculties (it seems the higher the intelligence, the more control the original personality has) and his attack on Datu has the potential to inoculate him. Randy is at odds with Ink and has left a trail of bread crumbs for the characters to follow.

IF the disease agent is unable to complete the turning process, the victim's immune system will develop antibodies and conditions that prevent turning in the future. Also, individuals who are turned by disease agent 1 (the origianl strain) are not susceptible to the mutated strain (which creates the "little ones"). It appears that Ink has a hand in creating the mutated strain and needs new human subjects to infect. This explains why he is so careful in his attacks on the characters...he does not have total control of the other zombies and he needs to reduce fatalities or type-1 zombie conversion. We do not know why he wants to do this, but a smaller zombie population is more sustainable, and due to his narcissism and necrosis, he probably considers his modifications an improvement on normal human life.

A side effect of the new strain is that it makes the infected even more susceptible to cancer. Ink is trying to develop something that will reduce these problems.
Um, you are not KC trolling us with an alt are you?

Infection by biter 1.0 does seem to prevent upgrading to inkling. Otherwise, I am sure Ink would have done so. There is an abundance of examples of a similar virus giving immunity to a similar pathogen. The reason "milk maids" were so desired by rampaging knights is that the milk maids got cowpox. This protected them from the much more nasty scaring caused by Smallpox which leaves a much greater number and more severe scars.