Lance Sterling is an agent with H.T.U.V. Walter Beckett is a gadget guru for the same organization.
That acronym stands for "Honor, Trust, Unity, Valor. That pretty well describes why its employees uses the acronym. Except when they refer to it simply as the Agency, not to be confused with the CIA whose operatives also use that term. Unlike the latter governmental department which is housed in Langley, Virginia, the H.T.U.V. Agency is located in D.C. itself; beneath the famous reflecting pool that runs between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.
Under that impressive receptacle of water is an even more impressive headquarters. "Stainless steel blended with touchscreen walls that monitor everywhere in the world. Nothing went unnoticed by the Agency. Even the walls had eyes." The Agency is run by Joy Jenkins, an often stern looking woman likely in her late 50s with short silver hair and rectangle-shaped eye glasses perpetually perched at the end of her nose to allow her to stare over them with her glare. She is not nicknamed 'Joyless' for nothing.
Lance Sterling is one of her operatives and likely her best and most favored one. She cares a good about him but that does not slow her down sending him into danger around the world. There is no doubt in anyone's mind at H.T.U.V. that Sterling is an awesome operative and just by looking at him you would know he was secret agent material. He is a tall slender man whose frame hides how strong and agile he always is. He is a black man with thick deep black eyebrows. He consistently dresses in a black tuxedo, tailored to fit his body perfectly.
He is also a pigeon. Okay, he is not really a pigeon per se but when a very nasty nemesis uses really cool technology to make himself look just like Sterling and then steals stuff from H.T.U.V. making sure the cameras all see him doing so, thus making everyone think Sterling did it. That put an arrest warrent out on Sterling and that made Sterling have to go into hiding and that took Sterling to Walter Bennett who did not want to give Sterling the concoction in the beaker but things happen and Sterling drank it and ... Sterling is now a pigeon. A pretty one, IMHO. Blue head feathers with grey feathers over the rest of him. And with thick deep black eyebrows.
Bennett is a 20-year-old gangly nerd who is employed by H.T.U.V. as a gadget man. He is very, very good at it - except... none of the field agents want to use his stuff. They are inventive and pretty impressive and they work really well. It is just that his weapons are all, well, nonlethal. Bennett, who never knew his dad, lost his police officer mother when he was 10; she was shot and killed and since then Bennett hates guns. His weapons have cool ways of stopping the bad guys but the agents like their guns so ...
When Sterling has that imposter problem and has to lam it, he has no one else to turn to except Bennett and once he drinks that formula and goes all little pigeon-y, well, his need for Bennett just grows and grows.