"HNC Protocol Violated" on entering Crumbled Laboratory

Selected the Daily Mission from Zana and followed her into the portal to the Crumbled Laboratory. Immediately after entering the scene, the game froze with a Windows dialog box: "HNC Protocol Violated". PoE then terminates with a runtime error. After relaunching PoE, the portal to Crumbled Laboratory is still active in my hideout, and the same error occurs repeatedly.

I just got this same error myself on a Waste Pool map... can't enter the area without the crash.