Chapter Text
By Jean-Marc Laurent | Published for Investigative Group
May 28, 2026
As forty-eight nations finalize their participating teams for the expanded FIFA Men's World Cup 2026 across North America, the excitement is undeniable. Yet, the governing body faces concerns from fans and traditional federations alike regarding player safety and competition integrity.
Under Section 4.2 of the updated WADA and FIFA Medical regulations, the focus has shifted from standard chemical doping to the highly controversial screening for Hematological Regeneration Syndrome (HRS)—the scientific term for the hereditary genetic anomaly, colloquially known as “vampirism.”
Despite many strict and new protocols mandating the biometric monitoring and post match thermal tracking to ensure normalcy, medical experts and research scientists admit that trusted diagnostic checks remain critically limited.
While the new sports federations’ propaganda attempts to dismiss the condition as a rare and manageable defect requiring strict medical suppression, concerns remain when statistics show that even now, not much is known about these anomalies.
For the average fan of football, the fear isn't only the unfair stamina advantages and heightened reflexes associated with unmonitored HRS carriers; it is the physical safety of the human athletes sharing the pitch, who have trained for such skills and were not simply born atypical.
Until science can guarantee a definitive and indisputable test, the locker rooms at the World Cup will remain a guessing game, where the line between an elite athlete and a biological anomaly remains terrifyingly thin.
<For more detailed coverage on the 2026 tournament regulations: Read our full interactive breakdown: Deciphering Section 4.2.>
________
Michael Olise was not bummed out.
Admitting otherwise meant he cared, which he did not, because really, it didn't matter. Things circulate around all the time, it was the fleeting fate he chose for himself as a footballer, even when it felt impossible to hold onto.
So why did this feel like it mattered? He thought, gripping his phone tighter as he stared at the screen, to the point that the light mode was beginning to strain his eyes.
“so excited for olise in the world cup lol, hes so elite he might as well be a vampire”
Each time he read the comment—which had been a lot for the last six minutes— it felt like the mockery of those words dug their claws in deeper.
No one knew.
They couldn't know.
It was simply not possible that anyone else knew that Michael was a medical anomaly. An unsolved puzzle of a disease, who was playing and posing as one of the best footballers in his club. Every day, though, it felt like everyone was only waiting for him to turn himself in. To plead guilty of a crime he didn’t have the chance to yet commit, but simply a crime he was.
His phone buzzed the second he set it down. Michael fought down the very childish urge to groan, expecting some exhausting email or draining text. He snatched it back, squinted at the screen, and stared until the words made sense.
Chess.com
The Daily Puzzle is ready! Solve it to keep your streak alive.
Oh for fuck's sake.
He closed the phone again, looking down at the blankness for a minute. The idea of anyone messaging him, of notifications from games that had become routine, or even being on social media did not sound appealing. But he couldn't help the tightness in his chest as seconds passed with just a black screen staring back.
Finally, he clicked the app and moved on autopilot. Staring at a grid of sixty-four squares where every wrong move meant an instant red flash felt like the exact punishment he needed right now. He wasn't strategic about it—strategy meant thinking, and he didn't want to think—he just flicked whatever was nearest forward until it looked pathetic enough.
Well, he did, until a barrage of messages showed up at the top, all reading the name of Ousmane, which he clicked to see.
Ousmane: my boyssss
Ousmane: 🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷
Ousmane: pack the bags USA ain’t ready for this tournament fr !!!
Ousmane: let’s go fetch that star boys
Michael felt himself smile at the obvious excitement, and he had the childish urge flaring up to type out a correction. To remind him that they weren't just playing in the States, that Canada and Mexico were literally hosting half the tournament brackets.
But the text box stayed very empty.
The small smile vanished as quickly as it had come. Correcting should have felt normal, something that comes second-nature to normal friends. Being normal felt like a lie. He had no business acting like one of them, playing the smart-ass, when he was carrying a disease that could ruin them if it ever came to light.
Michael pulled the top panel down, tapped Do Not Disturb, and swiped back over to the chess game.
He had a fleeting thought that he should feel guilty for leaving a teammate on seen right before a major tournament, but as he moved the knight to a stupid position, he felt that he couldn't see them caring.
________
Standing directly outside of the dressing room had twisted Michael's stomach into the anticipation the World Cup was supposed to bring into players, but going in was not kind to his ears. It was loud the second he pushed the door open—the good loud, with laughter and conversations. Still, loud nonetheless.
"Oh, look who's here!" Ousmane shouted, gesturing wildly with a half-wrapped wrist. "Look at him. He plays in Germany and now he’s too elite for the group chat. Left on read, Michael Olise? Seriously?"
A few heads turned, teasing voices immediately chiming in with loud, echoing noises of agreement just to stir the pot.
Michael felt a familiar heat crawl up the back of his neck, a bit flustered but unable to stop a small laugh. He dropped his duffel onto the floor by his locker. "Shut up Ousmane, man. You text too much."
"Excuse you!" Ousmane shot back, though it only made the room laugh.
Michael opened his locker, the ease of the room resting over him. For a few minutes, the noise was just background static. But as the chaos continued around him, his eyes drifted over. He had spent the whole morning trying not to look toward the end of the bench, but he did anyway. Which was a horrible idea.
Because oh.
Kylian was sitting there. Kylian fucking Mbappé. He had his hair cut sharper for the tournament, and Michael noticed that the clean lines suited him well. He was laughing at something Konaté was saying, his eyes crinkling tightly at the corners, that bright smile flashing across his face.
He watched the steady, rhythmic movement of Kylian’s fingers idly picking at the edge of his athletic tape. It was a stupid, boyish thing to fixate on, but in the middle of all the noise, Michael couldn't seem to look anywhere else.
He stood there with his training shirt gripped in his hand, his chest tightening as he looked at his captain and came to a realization. He was completely, undeniably fucked for the next month. There was no way he was surviving this tournament.
The heavy door clicked open, and Didier Deschamps walked in.
The volume snapped to a silence, pulling Michael out of his trance. Deschamps stood with his hands on his hips, looking over the squad with proudness. He offered a quick speech congratulating them on making the roster, building the heavy tournament hype before laying out exactly how brutal the morning session was going to be today.
Michael Olise wouldn't have it any other way—not with the strong chance that they really could win.
The heat on the pitch was annoying. By the time the assistant coaches called for a hydration break, the humidity felt like it was pressing down on Michael's chest. He hated it.
He crowded around the water crates with the rest, lungs burning as he grabbed a cold bottle. He was soaked through, the thin training jersey sticking to his skin. So fucking annoying.
"Look at you Mikey," Youssouf muttered, wiping his own forehead with the back of his hand as he looked over. "Absolutely melting. Are you softened up already?"
Before Michael could even reply, a voice beside him spoke.
"Is Michael hot?"
Kylian was standing there, his head tilted slightly in question, voice soothing enough to stop his heart. It was the first time he had spoken directly to Michael all morning, and it was to say that.
Michael’s throat went dry. The words seemed to hang in the humid air between them. Instead of answering and likely embarrassing himself, Michael tilted his head back to down the water bottle to hide the sudden friction in his chest.
________
Terminals was always a blur of suitcases and unfunny jokes about the plane crashing. But it wasn't until the cabin doors of the charter flight sealed shut that the true weight of the summer settled.
The La Compagnie Airbus was dimmed near immediately, the overhead fixtures bleeding into a synthetic blue that was meant to probably mimic a midnight sky. In Michael's opinion, it just succeeded in making the interior feel like a subterranean vault. Most of the boys had fallen asleep the second the seatbelt sign clicked off, anyway.
Sure, they should take every spare minute of rest an international schedule could afford them.
But Michael didn't feel like sleeping.
The cabin was technically quiet, but to him, the quiet was very loud. The low-frequency drone of the stupid engines humming through his skull, the whispering of the staff at the back, and, worst of all, the beats. The steadiness and rhythm of human heartbeats.
He was trying not to listen. He was actively trying to force his mind to literally anything that didn't involve the physical presence of them. But the human body in sleep was an entirely different kind of presence.
They were just men here—heavy human frames, completely vulnerable to the elements and to each other.
So Michael sat lazily in his seat, long legs stretched out into the footwell, his hands resting loose on his lap. He hadn't liked the eye mask provided in the amenity kit, it was far too thin. He hadn't plugged in his headphones either; not being able to hear didn't seem ideal at all. With boredom threatening to arrive before the plane even departs, he stares at the unlit screen and wonders if he should watch a movie for now.
The call interrupted his thoughts. It came through right when the flight attendants started clearing away the pre-departure trays, and the screen lit up with Ebs' face. Michael swiped answer, leaning his head back into the leather while bringing his phone beside his ear.
"You're on then," Eze's voice came through, with muffled laughter in the background.
"Yeah. Just sealed the doors," Michael murmured. "You lot landed yet?"
"Nah, we’re still stuck on the tarmac. Delayed an hour because some genius lost his passport," Eze said, and Michael noticed that there was no more background noise. Eze probably got away from the group then. "But listen, I saw that article today. The one about the new biometric checks at the border. You see it?"
Michael’s fingers tightened slightly against his phone, lips pressed in a line before he trusted himself to speak again. "Saw the headline. Didn't read it."
"Illiterate Mikey," Eze teased, though his voice dropped a fraction, losing some of the bubbly nature. "They're doing full thermal imaging at this time. Mandating scans after matchday recovery. Standard 'safety' protocol, or whatever. It's ridiculous, honestly. They don't even trust their own technology but we have to."
Michael kept his eyes fixed on the seatback in front of him, keeping his breathing entirely even. "They're just ticking boxes, Ebs. Same as always."
"Yeah, well, ticking boxes gets annoying when the scanner takes three attempts," Eze muttered, annoyance lacing his words. "Had to stand under the infrared heat lamp for ten minutes just to get the green light to board. It's long, man. I'm just tryna play."
There was a silence that fell over them, both dwelling on Eze's words. He's one of the only footballers Michael knows that complains to him about HRS checks. Most wouldn't dare; even if they were 'normal,' complaining makes them suspicious. And being a suspect of vampirism meant even loyal teammates didn't have your back.
After a while, Michael let out a sigh. He knew that frustration intimately, but hearing Eze sound so upset made the knot in his own chest tighten. "Just drink some coffee before you land. Speeds it up."
"Trust Mikey to find a solution." Eze laughed, the sound bright and so easy. "Anyway, don't get your ass kicked. I'm trying to swap shirts with you in the final, yeah?"
"In your dreams, man," Michael said, a genuine smile pulling at his mouth. "Safe flight."
"Love, Mikey. See you on the other side."
The screen went black as the call ended. Michael stared at the reflection of his own locs for a second, wondering why Eze trusted him so openly. Complaining to the wrong person was a career-costing mistake, so why?
Before the thoughts could turn into more, he shook his head and tried to remember what he was doing before the call.
Right. The entertainment screen. He scrolled past the blockbuster section, and eventually settled on an old episode of The Bear. He needed the noise of a fictional kitchen.
He watched the characters move frantically across, shouting commands over the hiss of searing pans and many plates. But somewhere around the fifteen-minute mark, the fiction stopped sticking. The hyper-speed pacing of the show began to blur, and Michael’s mind inevitably slipped away, drifting toward the massive reality of the next four weeks.
The World Cup.
The World Cup was no longer an abstract date. It was physical. It was waiting. For him. For them. He found himself thinking about the sheer royalty of the tournament—the deafening volume, the heat, and the brutal pressure of a media apparatus that was just waiting for Les Bleus to stumble. They had a real chance to win the whole thing, a squad stacked with enough raw talent to dominate any pitch in the whole damn world.
And then, seamlessly, the thought of the squad morphed into the thought of the man leading it. It happened so quick that it was near embarrassing.
Michael’s gaze drifted as naturally as his mind had, his thoughts of media and matches evaporating the exact second his eyes found the object of their devotion.
Kylian was asleep.
Right across the narrow, carpeted aisle, less than four feet away, the center of it all. He could be the sun itself, like this.
It was a jarring sight, mostly because Michael had never actually seen his captain so still. In Michael’s mind—and in the mind of the entire football-watching world—Kylian Mbappé was defined by momentum, like a majestic force.
But here he was, stripped of the armband.
Kylian was lying on his side with his head resting against the airline pillow. One of his hands was tucked beneath his cheek, which couldn't possibly be comfortable, but his fingers were loose and relaxed. The blanket was near his hips, clearly having gotten tangled in his sleep and fell lower.
Michael had an unnerving urge to hold him as he slept—to be the one with his hand under Kylian's cheek so his hand wouldn't hurt, to make sure his blanket was always tucked high so he wouldn't wake up cold—but he couldn't so much as breath at the sight, let alone move.
Kylian looked small. Not in a physical sense, since the breadth of his shoulders beneath his shirt was still undeniable, but small in the way a person looks when people stop watching them.
Michael’s chest tightened, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the biological defect in his blood. He almost wished it did. Yet, it was that same boyish crush, resurrected here. It was the naivety of wishing to play pretend—the childish desire to trace his captain's profile.
Michael always noticed the small things about Kylian. The shit that the cameras at the Bernabéu or the Stade de France would never care to zoom in on. He would watch the way Kylian’s lower lip parted just a fraction as he exhaled, the way his eyes get wider when a topic he enjoys gets mentioned, and right now, the rhythmic twitch of his fingers. There was such an effortless beauty to him that made Michael want to apologize for looking.
If he was so good at noticing, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But it was. Because, as it always did, the silence allowed his mind to wander too far.
His eyes went to the slope of Kylian's shoulder. Then slid lower, tracking the bare line of his throat where the collar had shifted. The skin there looked delicious— flawless, and so so so exposed. And then, as if it was inevitable despite how hard he tried, Michael’s hyper-sensitive hearing caught it.
The pulse.
Michael had learned early on that there was an intimacy in hearing how someone was kept alive. But hearing Kylian's heartbeat was entirely different.
Thump. Thump. Thump. The heartbeat of an elite athlete, pushing human blood through the vein running down the side of his neck.
Michael’s fingers twitched against his thigh. The warmth in his chest turned cold and sickening. He was sure his mind saw a target. It saw prey. A place where skin could be broken, where his teeth could press against the heat of that pulse point until the steady rhythm stopped.
It was creepy. A fraud masquerading as a regular winger, sitting three feet away from his sleeping captain and thinking about his life like it was a vampire's choice to make. He swallowed when he saw Kylian shift a little.
If Kylian woke up right now, the illusion would be gone. Kylian wouldn't see a talented young player to tease during training; he would see a risk. Someone who didn't belong beside him.
Michael forced his head back against the headrest, tearing his gaze away. His breath come in small gasps, even tho he didn't deserve to feel fear. It was cruel, trapping him in his pod while Kylian's steady pulse continued ringing in his ears.
Am I everything they said I would be?