"Vanchat would never have caught us if I'd just done my job. I should have listened to you. Trusted my team the way you insisted. If I had... they might still be alive."
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 Phil Coulson, Amador was an unwilling servant of HYDRA for several years, until Coulson and his team rescued her.
"Akela Amador was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Seven years ago, she led a raid on one of Vanchat's gulags. Everyone believed that she and the two other agents on the mission were killed. I had my doubts. So I sent in a second team, just in case. They found a lot of carnage but couldn't confirm that any of it was Amador; left the possibility open."
Akela Amador became one of the best agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., trained by Phil Coulson. According to Coulson, Amador had remarkable skills, comparable to Melinda May, however, she never saw the value of teamwork and trusting others. Coulson felt that he could nurture these qualities in her, so he pushed her, albeit perhaps too much. In 2006, Amador led a team into one of the gulags run by T. Vanchat, where she was captured and lost an eye, while the rest of her team was killed.[2]
HYDRA's Hostage[]
Becoming a Weapon[]
"You have no idea, do you?" "We know that you receive orders." "Then you know that once they see you, only one of us gets to walk out of here. They built in a fail-safe. Either I kill you or they kill me."
Amador 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.[2]
Amador was sent by her handler on a number of jewelry heists, including Milan, Monte Carlo and Stockholm, totaling over 30 million dollars. In Stockholm, she found that her target diamonds were being transported by a crew of fifty masked security officers handcuffed to identical cases, only one of which actually contained the jewels. She used her backscatter vision to identify the briefcase containing the diamonds and followed her target into the subway. Then, Amador disabled the lights, incapacitated the masked men in her train car, and forcibly stole the diamonds.
Using a falsified passport, she traveled to Zloda, Belarus and procured a hotel room. There, she warned the Innkeeper of a life-threatening tumor, and she arranged to conduct a deal with Kropsky. She briefly threatened him after identifying two bodyguards he had brought, but she relented and traded the stolen diamonds for an access card to the Todorov Building.[2]
However, Coulson and his team had tracked Amador to Zloda. She became aware of her pursuers, and upon finding a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, she rammed a truck into their van. She returned to her inn room and was granted permission to sleep, unaware that Coulson's Team had hacked into her eye software. Amador soon awoke to Melinda May, who attempted to negotiate and ease Amador, but Amador revealed that she had no other choice but to kill May to prevent her handler from killing her. The two engaged in a fight, with Amador knocking out a lamp to darken the room and allow herself to take advantage of her implant. She was about to kill May before Phil Coulson came in and knocked her out with the Night-Night Gun. Amador was subdued and brought to the Bus.[2]
Freed from HYDRA[]
Amador's false eye is finally removed
"You deserve a second chance." "You already gave me one. Doesn't matter how it plays out from here. I'm free."
Coulson's Team was able to hijack the signal to Amador's eye, which allowed Grant Ward to carry out her mission without alerting her handler to the fact that she had been compromised. While this was happening, Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons performed surgery on Amador, removing her bionic eye.
Amador relaxes without her eye implant
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 and now sporting an eyepatch, 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.[2]
Personality[]
"Amador was smart, talented, fearless. She didn't play well with others, found little value in teamwork. I thought I could instill those qualities in her, so I pushed her... maybe too hard."
While Amador was in S.H.I.E.L.D., she was smart, talented, and fearless. However, Phil Coulson noticed that she didn't like teamwork and was not a good teammate. He pushed her to become this person, but he pushed her to hard. After a mission that killed many of her teammates, Amador was ridden with guilt and the permanent reminder of her mistakes in her eye. She knew she should've listened to Coulson and always regretted it, blaming herself for the deaths of her partners. Once she was coerced by HYDRA, Amador stayed working alone, but was always fearful of the Englishman watching her being able to kill her at any second. Due to this, she didn't trust anyone, not even her old mentor Coulson, nor his team. In spite of this, however, Akela still had the level of kindness she could display whilst under the control of Centipede, using her enhanced X-Ray vision to detect a tumor within the body of her Innkeeper and directing her to have a doctor examine her, allowing her to have the tumor removed and saving her life.
Powers and Abilities[]
Former Powers[]
"It switches to backscatter when she closes her eyes."
Thanks to the Backscatter X-Ray Eye Implant Amador formerly possessed, she 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[]
"There are only a few women in the world who could pull off something so impossible. Since you were on the Bus, I thought it had to be her."
Expert Martial Artist: As a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Amador is a highly skilled hand-to-hand combatant who was able to match 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.
Expert Spy: As a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Amador was a very capable spy, but was eventually captured. Afterwards, she was able to blend in in public, going unnoticed by her former mentor, Phil Coulson. She only revealed herself when she needed to.
Expert Assassin: Training at S.H.I.E.L.D., Amador was able to become a great assassin, which allowed her to easily kill the man in the red masks in order to get the diamonds.
Backscatter X-Ray Eye Implant: A prosthetic ocular implant that allowed Amador to see through solid objects when her eyes were closed. It was also the means used by her handler to send orders and instructions.
