A sharp band of light and shadow moves across her, glowing from one of the hallways.

Uh oh.

That's one of the hydrazine tanks. Something that makes a sharp light, plus rocket-fuel...

"Hello? Who's got that light?" She walks after it.

The light is coming from some sort of glowing ovoid, perhaps a foot or two long, flying through the halls and leaving a bright trail through the air.

"Frickfrickfrick what the hell - don't break anything please - what is it, escaped specimen?"

She kicks her suit's engine into a higher gear and pursues.

Coming to a wider patch, the ovoid loops around, coming to a hovering stop. Up close, she can see its many glowing nodules, and four glowing seams running from tip to tail.

The seams might be opening.

It doesnt move like a creature. It moves like a machine. She doesn't have a weapon- The welder or drill, perhaps.

She watches closely.

The four glowing panels open and fold down. Inside is a dull gray-green sphere; it irises open at the top, and a viridian light floods the corridor.

Is it too late to turn around and run? She turns around and-

With a loud whooshing sound, her vision fragments into countless points of light, swimming disconnected around her. There's a brief feeling of weightlessness and disconnection.

. . . Maybe not quite so brief?

Okay okay no time for screaming suit into sealed mode okay screaming now.

She screams.

And then she's back in the hallway, right where she was. There's no sign of the object.

Something is clearly wrong. Either she's having a hallucination episode or the entire complex is going crazy. Either way, time to get out, she makes for the exit.

This hallway should lead toward the exit. Instead it abruptly ends, sheared off at a slight angle, and opens onto broad daylight.

"Wha. Did it... Did it actually work?"

"Oh damn let's go make sure it didn't cut any toxic stuff in half!"

She exits and makes a fast investigatory circuit.

The first thing she sees outside is ice. Towering, glistening peaks of it, in vivid purples and greens.

The second thing is a perfectly ordinary hillside with ordinary houses. This could be anywhere in Germany, if not for the ice mountains. Anywhere but a top-secret research facility.

Walta can walk out and around the base, or what's left of it. A perfectly circular chunk of the facility.

The grass grows right up to the edge.

"...This doesn't make any sense."

Nothing in the cabin-sized chunk of machinery is dangerous - well, immediately getting more dangerous, so she walks her walker toward the... Edge. The ice.

The grass runs right up to that, too. Outside the sharp, curving edge there's only a jagged expanse of multicolored snow and ice.

As she gets close, she can see a slight disturbance in the air along the border. If she gets very close, she'll see more grass and trees superimposed,  like a reflection in a window.

Mirrored force field marking the boundary between what the hell ice-land and bucolic farming town.

This is not a thing to poke yet. Not until she understands a little more. She walks toward the town.

Where she sees a little girl, who 'eeps' loudly and runs off shouting, "MOM! THE WEIRD THING DID A THING!"

"Hey wait where am I, what's going on?"

Nope, the little girl has run off. Okay. She'll just keep walking. Not going to drop the hazmat suit yet - it's a pain to get out of and she doesn't know where she is... She'll set it into standing rest and let the engine idle, though, while she tries to make sense of the several bizarre things going on.

A little later, a well-dressed man walks up the town road toward her. "Hello, stranger," he says, spreading his arms. "Welcome to our little town of Barnstedt. Do you speak German?"

"Ja." Engine goes un-idle with a vroom so she can raise her visor. "Where on earth - or not - am I, do you know? The ice..."

"I know of no place on Earth with ice like that. I had feared we were beyond the reach of aid, but your arrival gives me hope.

Will you come have some coffee while we chat?"