Akela Amador

"Whatever's necessary."

- Akela Amador

Akela Amador is a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who was presumed dead, and reappeared on the grid committing diamond heists. A former protégé of Agent Phil Coulson, Amador was an unwilling servant of HYDRA for several years.

Early Life
Akela Amador became one of the best agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., trained by senior Agent Phil Coulson. He would describe Amador as, "smart, talented and fearless", with skills comparable to the legendary Melinda May. Amador never saw the value of teamwork and trusting others, but Coulson felt that he could nurture these qualities in her. Coulson pushed Amador, perhaps too much.

In 2006, Amador led a team into one of the gulags run by the criminal Vanchat, where she was captured and lost an eye. The rest of her team was killed. Amador would later lament that if only she had trusted her team, they would be alive today.

Captivity
She spent four years in a cage in a copper mine in Shanxi Province. Phil Coulson heard rumors of her whereabouts and led a team to secure her release, but when he arrived, Amador's captors had already moved her to a different location.

Amador's jailers performed multiple surgeries on her, eventually installing a prosthetic eye in her head. Through this eye, she was constantly monitored and received instructions for jobs she was to perform. At first, she ignored the instructions, but found that she experienced great pain, described as "an electric migraine", unless she complied. She would soon realize that her eye also contained a kill switch, to ensure her loyalty. The eye-piece also included a "backscatter x-ray" function that allowed Amador to see through solid objects.

Over the years, the assignments usually consisted of thefts, tailing a target or breaking into locations; her assignments always being delivered through her eye piece by someone that Amador determined to be an Englishman.

Reunited With Coulson
"How long have they been monitoring you?" "Years.""

- Phil Coulson and Akela Amador

Amador's handler sent her on a number of jewelry heists, including Milan, Monte Carlo and Stockholm, totaling over 30 million dollars. The complexity of these thefts put her back on Phil Coulson's radar. Coulson was determined not to jump to any conclusions about his former protégé, and after discovering the nature in which she was being controlled, was determined to help her. Coulson and his team tracked her from Stockholm to Minsk, Belarus, where she was to perform an act of industrial espionage at a research facility. After being tracked down by Coulson and Melinda May, Amador was subdued and brought to the Bus.

Coulson's Team was able to hijack the signal to Amador's eye, which allowed Agent Grant Ward to carry out her mission without alerting her handler to the fact that she had been compromised. While this was happening, Coulson's science team, Agents Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons, performed surgery on Amador, removing her bionic eye. When May tracked down the location of Amador's handler, Coulson confronted him. As soon as he did, the handler's own eye-piece activated its own fail-safe, killing him instantly. In the end, Amador's handler was as much of victim as she.

Finally freed from her unknown masters, Amador was taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. Coulson assured her that she would get a fair trial and that he would testify on her behalf. Amador was simply relieved that her long ordeal was finally over, merely happy to get a good night's sleep without being watched.

Powers

 * X-Ray Vision: Thanks to the Backscatter X-Ray Eye Implant she formerly possessed, Amador was capable of seeing through solid objects, which also allowed her to see in the darkness as a form of night-vision. She often used it to her advantage in combat by destroying light sources, as she could see in the dark with the eye implant. However, she lost this power as her eye implant was removed.

Abilities

 * Master Martial Artist: As a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Amador is an extremely skilled hand-to-hand combatant with skills to match even Melinda May. She was considered by Phil Coulson as one of the few women in the world capable of performing a series of seemingly impossible jewel thefts that she was ordered to commit.

Allies

 * S.H.I.E.L.D. (First Incarnation) - Enemies (under coercion) turned Allies
 * Coulson's Team
 * Phil Coulson
 * Melinda May
 * Grant Ward
 * Leo Fitz
 * Jemma Simmons
 * Skye
 * Innkeeper
 * Kropsky - Contact

Enemies

 * HYDRA
 * Centipede Project - Allies (under coercion) turned Enemies
 * Englishman † - Handler

Appearances

 * Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
 * Season One
 * Eye-Spy
 * The Bridge (mentioned)
 * The Magical Place (mentioned)
 * Turn, Turn, Turn (mentioned)