I played through the game once and got what I imagine is the 'normal' ending, I don't know how I could get the other one but my first thought is choosing differently during the scene with Mariette being given the gun.
Anyway, what an experience. You really have a knack for writing stories with two women stuck somewhere and one of them having a gun, huh? It was nice to get to see another side of Xelia; she was one of the characters we got very little of during Loner Dog besides her debilitating depresssion and playing devil on the shoulder for some of her friend's dangerous habits, and her personality there is much clearer and stark now that I've played this. Though the game is short, you really make her point (as in, the view she has of herself as someone who's broken but in a useful way for her friends and for the world she wants) come across like a hammer to the face.
Her character writing is pretty great, though personally (and this might 100% be a me thing) I had a hard time at the beginning with her dialogue; it's very different from pretty much every other character in your works and I'm sure that's by design. There's a certain separation between dialogue and narration in your works and Xelia feels like she blurs the line between the two, and that's a really cool thing but the overtly technical style of the dialogue itself took me a little while to get into without it feeling distracting.
Which I think wouldn't be a problem with a longer game, though I get that deadline and scope limitations affect this a lot. I always argue for cutting and narrowing stories but this is one of the few times where I feel like the story would've benefitted from a little more breathing room and a few more scenes, but again that's a very minor nitpick. It accomplished what it wanted and deliivered those punches well as is, just maybe feeling a little cramped.
With that said though, I really like this as a short piece; it's striking and brutal in a very angrily positive way, which I appreciate even if we live in slightly different geopolitical realities; the feeling itself and the anger are very familiar and very eloquently expressed here, and I'm a fan.
Not to mention that everything around the writing supports it very well, as usual. I'm a huge fan of the 3D models mixedd with the portraits. The music is great, and the sound design especially was delicious here; the part where Xelia's actions are narrated after she takes the gun back are so crunchy and perfect.
Anyway, great job as usual! This fucks hard.