0.
To say the graduate students were infuriated with her would have been an understatement.
Everyone at the Grisha Academy of Small Sciences knew of Dr. Morozova's infamous "impossible" equation. Nearly every student, regardless of discipline, tried hacking it at least once and failed. It was practically a rite of passage.
Alina Starkov had no intention of solving it and attracting the wrath of the cutthroat elitist grads who'd been dead-set on getting Morozova's prestigious research placement since birth.
But she had. And they weren't the only ones who suddenly took an interest in her.
The eminent Grisha Academy was the most distinguished university in all of Ravka for its exceptional calibre of scientific research and alumni. Alina had wanted to attend for as long as she could remember but the tuition was ridiculously beyond what an orphan like her could afford and without any other means of financial support, attending the academy became nothing more than a pipe dream.
That hadn't stopped her from applying, however. Just to see if she could get in. She wouldn't attend unless she wanted to be paying off the student loans until she was dead in her grave. But if she was rejected, which she was sure would be the case, then that meant she didn't belong there anyway and she could forget the whole thing and move on with her life.
But she hadn't been rejected.
She'd gotten into their physics program with a full year's scholarship to boot.
It wouldn't cover all the remaining year's costs, true. But her correspondence with the academy revealed that she could conceivably be awarded future scholarships if she maintained a constantly high GPA. In other words, the pipe dream she'd been fantasizing about? It was possible. Not easy, by any means, but entirely possible.
And that scared her. For the first time in her life, she'd have to leave Mal behind and try to strike it out on her own. And how could she do it without him? How could he survive without her? No, she told herself. Where I really belong is with Mal.
That settled the matter for her. The next day, she wrote to the Academy saying she would be attending Ravka State University to study geography instead. They were disappointed but wished her well and that was the end of it.
Until the infamous incident with Morozova's equation.
1.
She'd left the club early, soon after Mal had disappeared from her sight along with the raven-haired girl he'd been dancing with. The girl had been wearing the standard blue uniform of the Grisha Academy that indicated she studied in the physics department and Alina could barely contain her envy.
That could have been me, she thought bitterly as she made her way back to the conference center they were staying at.
For two years, she'd successfully avoided coming into contact with snobby Grisha students, though their paths did cross on occasion. Like now, for instance. The Kribirsk Convention Center had overbooked itself once again and now Alina and her fellow classmates from Ravka State were forced to share accommodations with the disturbingly well-dressed Grisha students who swirled past them in clusters of red, blue, and purple.
"Back so soon?" Ruby asked when she entered their room.
"Yeah, I think I'm getting sick," she lied. Sick from watching Mal lock lips with that girl.
Ruby didn't look convinced by thankfully didn't inquire any further, choosing to return to her book. Alina knew coming here was a mistake. There's no way she was going to get any sleep now, not with that image of her best friend burned into her retinas. She needed a distraction so she quickly changed into something more appropriate and decided to explore the rest of the convention on her own, looking for something to keep her occupied.
As she headed downstairs towards the conference rooms, she tried not the seethe but it was hard not to. She'd gone to Ravka State because of Mal; because she was sure they'd need each other to survive the big bad world. But it was obvious from the first months of their freshman year that the need was painfully one-sided. Clearly, Mal didn't need her as much as she needed him. While he aced all his classes with his eyes closed, Alina struggled and dragged herself though it.
She'd just gotten to the bottom step when she noticed a group of slightly drunk Grisha students staggering out of an empty conference room, laughing to one another. They were wearing the distinctive red uniform that indicated they studied under the biology department and Alina knew from experience that they were usually the cockiest and therefore waited until they moved out of sight.
When she peeked into the room they'd just emptied, she was relieved to see Alexei was sitting in one of the far corners of the room, hunched over his sketchbook and doodling idly. She swung open the door and made her way in, passing by a pair of blue-uniformed Grisha students who were whispering about something in hushed tones.
"What are you doing up?" she asked him as she approached. He nearly leapt five feet in the air.
"Saints, you startled me," he said, recovering quickly and turning back to his sketch. "Couldn't sleep. Thought I'd get a head start on that cartography assignment anyway."
"Nerd," she teased, shaking her head.
Up ahead of the rows of seats, she noticed someone had pulled up a whiteboard with bunch of half-erased formulas on it.
"Morozova," said Alexei simply, in response to her implicit question.
"He was here?"
Dr. Aleksander Morozova was the dean of the Grisha Academy and was somewhat of a mysterious figure. Alina had never seen him in the flesh but everyone within the academic circle was familiar with him and his research on stellar evolution.
"No, he's off lecturing somewhere else. Those Grisha students just came in to crack his equation again."
"And?"
"They gave up as usual. I'm starting to think if they can't solve it, it's not meant to be solved. Maybe the dean just likes torturing his students. Keeps them motivated or something."
Alina rolled her eyes. She glanced at the whiteboard which was covered in scribbles and diagrams. There was a nearly full bottle of vodka sitting idly by the floor which seemed a terrible waste to her. She walked up to the front, picked up the bottle, and chugged nearly half of it before setting it down. Alexei gaped at her in shock and the two Grisha students at the back paused mid-conversation, looking somewhat impressed.
"It was a rough night," she explained to Alexei when the burning in her throat died down. At this point, she'd do anything to forget Mal and his stupid sexcapades. She turned to the whiteboard, eyeing it warily for a moment.
The problem looked simple enough. Morozova was only asking for the Schwarzschild radius of a supermassive black hole. But he hadn't indicated what the mass was; that had to be calculated separately based on the initial conditions of a binary star system before it had collapsed. And that demanded knowledge on stellar evolution. She could see why so many students were struggling. The problem required a careful synthesis of information from a number of different disciplines: astrophysics, nuclear cosmochronology, black-body radiation, and ridiculous amount of math besides.
She could feel herself drawn to it already and picked up an abandoned marker. She had no delusions that she'd somehow solve the damned thing but it was something to keep her mind off of Mal; something that actually interested her.
The hours went by and she scribbled down what she knew, getting drunker by the minute. She'd taken up both sides of the whiteboard for her solution plus another entire other board. Alexei had been watching her with interest, but not with any inkling of what was to come. The Grisha students occasionally glanced her way but they were sure they were witnessing the drunk scribblings of an insomniac.
When Alina put wrote down the final line (a simple substitution to obtain the radius), she didn't think anything of it. She was upset, angry, drunk, and had hardly gotten any sleep so there was so way she'd done any of the calculations correctly. Besides, she hadn't set out to be correct, just distracted.
It was then that the door suddenly burst open and Dr. Raevsky yelled at them all to get out and go to bed. Alina cast a wary look at Alexei before they packed up their things and headed back upstairs. She was grateful for the hours of distraction because now she really was tired and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
2.
Alina Starkov's solution to Morozova's equation caused a total catastrophe the following morning.
She awoke to the sound of Alexei knocking on her door like a madman. She stumbled out of bed, hastily pulled on some sweatpants, and swung the door open.
"Where's the fire?" she spat, shooting him a death glare.
"No fire," Alexei said, "but you better come quick. And...maybe wear something more suitable."
She rolled her eyes and followed him downstairs, not bothering to change. He chose to remain silent all the way down to the conference room they'd vacated the previous night, except she could hardly see the door because there was a throng of Grisha students craning their necks and jabbing each other to try and get in.
"What in the name of Sankt Illya-"
"It's your equation," Alexei said, casting her a meaningful look. "I think you may have solved it."
Alina peered at him for a silent moment before throwing her head back in laughter. "What equation? You mean the one I drunkenly scribbled down at three in the morning?"
"It's getting pretty serious, Alina," he said, edging closer to the crowd. "All sorts of people have already claimed credit for it and now there's talk of getting Morozova to check the solution."
It was ridiculous. She'd been half asleep and half intoxicated when she'd attempted the problem. Surely, when someone much smarter than her checked the math they'd realize she'd made a colossal mistake somewhere? Still, talk of complete strangers taking credit for her work irritated her by no small amount. She pushed her way through the crowd and thanks to her tiny frame managed to squeeze into the room.
It was cramped and sweaty with the throng of people pushing and shoving each other. For a second, Alina felt like she was back in the club but she forced herself to end and took in the scene.
In front of the whiteboard was a group of rowdy biology students fighting with a girl from physics, who had an accusatory finger pointed at them. Alina recognized her as part of the pair of Grisha girls that had been in the room with her last night.
Suddenly, the girl's gaze snapped to Alina and her finger whirled around to point at her. "It was her! She was the one I was talking about!"
The crowd surrounding them scoffed. "She's not even Grisha!"
Before Alina could roll her eyes and throw them a snarky one-liner, Dr. Raevsky made his way to the front, apparently being dragged by one of last night's Grisha girls.
"See? I told you it's her! This the girl me and Nadia saw!"
Raevsky adjusted his eyeglasses, making a show of his disbelief and Alina let him peer and probe at her.
"Hmm," he said at last, as if he could no longer deny the truth. "Starkov, come with me."
He turned abruptly and made his way out of the room, the crowd parting for him. Alina considered not following him for a moment but she didn't want to be in the center of the lion's den so she quickly followed suit, ignoring the stares and whispers that followed her.
Raevsky made his way out into the main hall and gestured for her to step into the elevator. Alina complied, turning back to shoot a look at Alexei but he was nowhere to be found. She noticed a sizeable group of Grisha had started making their way towards the stairs.
Alina had no idea where Raevsky was taking her. She thought for a moment that he was just going to accompany her back to her rooms and tell her not to come downstairs again to make a fuss but the elevator passed her floor. And Mal's floor too. And the floors where the Grisha were staying.
She cast a quizzical look in his direction as the elevator came to a stop at the highest level but he didn't bother to give her any explanation. The floor they got off screamed 'exclusive' with leather lounge chairs, larger suites, and classical paintings.
"Where are we going?"
Raevsky ignored her and turned left, stopping in front of a conference room with large tinted windows. He knocked once before a staff member opened the door and Raevsky stepped in, gesturing for Alina to follow.
It was then that she realized she was inappropriately dressed. Her pajama bottoms had rubber ducks on them, for god's sakes. But she had the feeling she wasn't going to have the chance to run downstairs and change so she charged into the room, trying to look more confident than she felt.
It took her nearly a minute to process what she was seeing. There was a long black table in the center of the room which was surrounded by important looking people in both business suits and Grisha uniforms. They all turned to look at her, their eyes both curious and disdainful. She was just about to laugh and say something cheeky before slipping out the door to save herself when she caught sight of him. Only one member of the Academy wore black uniforms.
Dean Morozova.
He looked absolutely nothing like Alina had imaged. What with his air of mystery and genius, she'd expected some eccentric old college professor in his sixties; the kind that liked to create impossible puzzles for fun and played bingo on weekends.
Morozova was anything but.
With thick black hair brushed back, high cheekbones, and those startling grey eyes, he looked like he belonged on a movie set, not a college campus. He was stunning and unearthly, like no one she'd ever seen before. Alina realized she was staring but thankfully Morozova didn't notice. He was waiting expectantly, almost bored with it all.
Raevsky cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable. Voices and footsteps on the other side of the glass indicated that a curious group of Grisha were waiting outside. For what, Alina didn't know, but it set her teeth on edge.
"I've found her, sir," he said at last. "She's the one who attempted your equation."
Alina raised an eyebrow in his direction. It was one thing for Raevsky to address anyone as 'sir' and quite another to drag her here simply because she'd attempted an equation.
"Did she now?"
With a start, Alina realized that Morozova had now honed his gaze on her, like a predatory bird ready to strike down its prey. His voice was low and languid, as if he didn't care for anything. She'd always imagined him as a figure on the move, full of too much energy, always frantically inventing something new. But this vision of him lounging in his chair with an eerie stillness was almost sinful.
"Yes," said Alina, reluctantly. "I did, in fact, attempt your equation."
"And?" He seemed genuinely interested now, his fingers resting on his jaw. "What radius did you calculate?"
"Thirteen point seven million kilometers."
"And how did you arrive at that number?"
His face gave nothing away and his piercing gaze was beginning to unnerve her. If she'd answered correctly, he'd be curious to see how she'd done it. But if she'd gotten the wrong answer, he seemed just as likely to let her talk nonsense to humiliate Raevsky for wasting his time.
She crossed her fingers behind her back and hoped it was the first one, no matter how mad it all was. Something told her this man did not like to be disappointed.
"Well, I calculated the mass from the binary star system. Given the gravitational waves emitted, I constructed a matrix of the possible collision course. From there, I was able to extrapolate the remaining mass of the individual stars and the forces required to bring the debris together. You gave me the black body radiation constants which I used to eliminate the mass that escaped. But you also gave me the amount of energy released during nuclear fusion, which I figured was likely a red herring to throw people off. From there I simply multiplied the corrected mass by the proportionality constant to get the radius."
Alina clenched her teeth together, mentally preparing herself for the laughter and was not disappointed. But it wasn't Morozova who was laughing, but the raven-haired physics student from the club. She was standing in the doorway, practically cackling.
"It's so cute when they're clueless," she was saying to her friend.
Morozova's eyes never left Alina's. They were more unreadable than ever. She was just about to open her mouth to apologize for wasting his time when he put up a hand and the laughing and whispering stopped.
Complete silence.
"Ivan," he said to the scowling man beside him. "Take the girl back to my office. This meeting is over."
A/N: I apologize if this chapter was super-boring. I guess I had to dump a lot of information. I originally planned this as one-shot but it sort of got away from me. Currently, I'm attempting to keep it 3 chapters maximum because I don't think I have the time to commit to a super long fic :( Also, for those of you physics nerds out there, you can stop rolling around in agony and ripping out your hair. I know the science is total BS.