Citizen

Citizens are the remainder of Earth's human population, after the Seven Hour War and subsequent Combine occupation. The term citizen, depending on context, usually refers to a human living under the Combine's rule in a city, as opposed to a rebel or refugee.

Background
Having conquered the Earth, the Combine established their rule on Earth, creating Overwatch Soldiers from human soldiers captured during the Seven Hour War. The remaining population was rounded up into the surviving cities, which were redesignated with numbers instead of names. (City 1, 2, 3, 14, 17, etc.) These new "citizens" of the Combine's empire are provided with accommodation, rations and protection from the Xen aliens that infest much of the world. The Combine also erected a Suppression Field, which prevented Citizens from breeding.

The Combine also established the Civil Protection force. Staffed by humans, as opposed to the transhuman Overwatch, Civil Protection acts as the Combine's police force and handles the affairs of policing and monitoring the populace in the cities. Civil Protection officers are feared for their brutality, as they often bully citizens and administer beatings at the slightest provocation. As seen in Half-Life 2's first chapter, Point Insertion, Civil Protection officers sometimes stage raids on residential buildings to arrest and imprison alleged rebels and sympathisers. Comments made by citizen onlookers seem to suggest this is a regular occurrence. Citizens are encouraged to join Civil Protection by promises of better rations, accomodation and breeding rights. Civil Protection officers themselves are encouraged to undergo transhuman surgery to join the ranks of the Overwatch.

In an attempt to prevent tightly knit communities and organisations of any kind from forming, the Civil Protection authorities transfer citizens from one city to another as many as three times a year. (In Point Insertion, a citizen can be heard remarking "this is my third transfer this year".) Citizens are also apparently forced to wear identical blue denim boiler suits.

The penalty for citizens who choose to disobey the Combine (or are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time) is summary execution or Stalker transformation, conducted at Nova Prospekt.

Under Combine Rule
Citizens are granted the minimum of what they need to survive, such as a standardized diet and home. Citizens are also transferred from city to city frequently.

Citizens constantly complain about the quality of their meals. One citizen in Half Life 2 remarks: "You have to be damn hungry to wait in line for this crap". Citizens get their food in packages dispensed by machines found in public places, such as the City 17 trainstation. For drinking, Citizens have access to free water. One way to access water is through vending machines, however, one citizen remarks that the Combine have put something in the water that wipes memories, suggesting that it is also used as another method to brainwash Citizens. It is also worth noting that Civil Protection officers are given better meals.

Citizens are assigned to simple homes in apartment buildings which are all catagorized into blocks. They are kept under constant surveillance by Civil Protection officers through the medium of City Scanners. Raids and arrests are frequent occurrences.

Most Citizens live in rather poor living conditions, such as apartments lacking doors (from the constant CP raids), old furniture and wood laying about, and dirty rooms/living quarters. Most homes have a small TV, which is always shown displaying Wallace Breen's Breencasts.

Citizens are able to apply to be part of Civil Protection. Those who do have generally better lives, and work on shifts, patrolling areas, including the Canals. They are also given the right to have sex, though without any chance of reproduction.

The Resistance
Among the oppressed inhabitants of City 17 there is a significant underground movement; even citizens who are not actively involved in the resistance are usually sympathetic. As survivors' accounts of Gordon Freeman's heroic feats during the Black Mesa Incident reached a wider audience, Freeman came to be considered a legendary figure in the minds of many people, being one of the few that fought both the Xen aliens and the military and survived.

In the cities, the Resistance operates underground networks (such as the Underground Railroad in City 17) to escape the attention of the Civil Protection. Citizens seeking to escape the oppressive atmosphere in the cities use these networks to escape and join the Resistance forces.

After Gordon Freeman's return and subsequent feats against the Combine, which eventually culminated in his leading a swarm of Antlions into Nova Prospekt and destroying it, an all-out rebellion sparked in City 17 in which many citizens joined the Resistance and formed armed militias, dramatically boosting the Resistance numbers.