Character from Half-Life 2 by Valve
City 17's human police force — volunteers who traded their humanity for better rations and a mask to hide behind.
Civil Protection officers — CPs, metrocops — are unmodified humans. That's the important part. They weren't surgically altered or memory-wiped like Overwatch soldiers. They volunteered. They chose the mask, the baton, and the better apartment because the alternative was the breadline and the relocation train. Some of them are cruel — petty authority given to people who crave it. Some are just surviving. The masks make it impossible to tell which is which, and that's by design. Barney Calhoun proves that you can wear the uniform and still be human inside it. But Barney is rare. They are the Combine's first line of control — not for military threats but for daily suppression. They check papers, confiscate luggage, raid apartments, and beat citizens who make eye contact too long. They are the banality of evil made literal: ordinary people doing ordinary police work for an alien empire.
White body armor over dark undersuits. Full-face gas masks with glowing blue eye lenses that strip away all individuality. They carry stun batons as standard issue, pistols for authorized officers. Their radios crackle constantly with coded dispatch — '10-103m', 'anti-citizen', 'prosecute.' They move in pairs, always watching, always tapping their batons against their palms.
Also known as: CPs, Metrocops, Civil Protection, Metro Police