Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, S.H.I.E.L.D's certified technoscientific geniuses, are examining the Tesseract. True to its name, it appears to be capable of manipulating spacetime in more than the usual 3+1 dimensions. That goes part of the way to explaining why it emanates a tetrahedron of warped space whose edges crackle with the blue light of energy rushing down some sort of hyperspatial gradient, but Bruce is still very surprised when it hits him.
There are a lot of things that no one knows, yet.
(Most people's Law personas tend less curious, less open-to-novelty, than their Chaos sides. Layne's never had this. He considers it one of his best strengths.)
"...Um. So. It - sounds like you might be from somewhere...else." Who knows where?? Not him!!! He's starting to worry it won't even be findable in the Records. Which is going to give Veth conniptions, if he's right.
Wow.
"I'm - sorry, I'm trying to figure out where to start and what order to go in. Um, right now we're in the Underworld. Which is Chaos. We don't have rule of law here. 'Crime' isn't a thing. Uh, things are still pretty tame on this level, because someone decided to round up a lot of friends and mount defences a few levels further down to keep hooligans out of their nightclub. And," a flash of a grin that's almost but not quite Antat, "because we're boring squares up here and what'd the hooligans even want to bother with us for. But really soon we're going to get to the Surface and that does have law and you really shouldn't do any crimes, our reporting is second-highest in the nation."
"I'm not going to--I don't want to do any crimes but it occurs to me that I don't know what the laws are here, is there anything I'm likely to run afoul of other than 'don't injure or deceive people or mess with their property'?" Like, for example, being in the country without a passport or any form of identification or permission to be here. He's probably going to catch some shit trying to get back into the US, but once he's somewhere on his phone's network he'll call Coulson and Coulson will do mysterious government person things until Bruce is back where they want him. It's the closest thing he's seen yet to an upside of being considered a military asset.
"If you generalize 'injure' to all the ways of harming people that aren't literally picking fights, I think that should mostly get you through? You'll be with us. ...Also, I mean, don't - randomly leave your clothes on a fence and wander around naked singing, or stand in the subway doors so they can't close, or knock over all the cereal in the grocery store - but it's not illegal to delay trains or whatever, it's just rude."
He seems so freaked out! Veth tries to smile reassuringly at him. "Hey, you'll be fine. You're with us."
Oh dear, facial expressions. He misses his tiny cabin in Brazil. "I'm going to try to avoid inconveniencing people in full generality. More than I already have, I mean. Also, I don't think you ever actually said what country this is?"
". . . I think I am worse at geography than I thought I was." Or whatever the Tesseract did isn't handling proper nouns intuitively and those are all unfamiliar names for very familiar locations and he's going to look like he's never heard of Asia.
They walk for a while through a dark rough-cut tunnel lit only by flickering candles, and then emerge through a curtain of - is that vines - no they're fake vines, carefully and lovingly made of silk and embroidery floss and some other materials -
- into a much larger corridor where every single surface of everything is coloured in gloriously colourful graffiti. A different group of teenagers, these ones wearing masks that hide their faces, are working on a new section. They're hanging off ceiling harnesses to do it, laughing and shoving each other so they sort of bounce around against the walls.
"How are you on stairs? We're thirty levels down but it's faster than waiting for the lifts."
"I cannot climb a fireman's pole but I can climb a lot of stairs. But I might be disappointingly slow at it." Also, wow, thirty flights down is impressively deep. This whole place is super interesting and he would have a good time exploring it if he was here as a tourist with a suitcase and a plan.
They follow the corridor and end up coming out on the spiral staircase, looking back out into the huge mineshaft thing! The way the stairs are set up, a huge gently looping circle rather than switchbacks with about one rotation per level - though the levels continue to be weirdly offset and sometimes sloping, rather than lining up the way storeys in a building would - makes it feel a lot less like a slog.
And there's a view! Some sort of extremely weird improv or performance-art piece or something is being staged in a screened in, triple-height level a little above them, with various people wearing mostly body paint and tights, assembling their bodies with the help of some hanging silks and other accessories to make - a tree with its branches waving in the wind, which then gradually and creepily mutates into some sort of shark...
Then they're around the bend from it, and can see a - classy bar patio, overlooking the depths? The clientele there are older, forties to sixties. Most of them are sitting, or lounging on a giant beanbag-bed-thing in the middle. One woman who looks about fifty is hanging from a chandelier for some reason.
Up and up and up.
Up they hike. Bruce has the physique of someone for whom physical activity has mostly consisted of miserable grade school gym classes, and his legs are going to be in open rebellion the day after tomorrow, but he keeps moving on a combination of nervous energy and not wanting to embarrass himself any further. The performance art is a nice distraction.
"I'm guessing you don't have any weapons," Layne informs Bruce, "but if you do, lockers are here." He gestures.
"Banned items topside are - weapons aside from a couple of approved defence-only ones if you have a permit. Any non-prescribed mind-affecting drugs. Umm, am I forgetting anything obvious? Lots of people change clothes here but you're fine."