Emily Wong: Greetings everyone, welcome to Citadel NewsNet. I'm your host, Emily Wong, and today we've got two very special guests here with us. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Commander John Shepard and Tali'Zorah vas Normandy!

Applause as Shepard and Tali enter the stage, taking their seats.

Emily Wong: Thank you both for coming today, it's great to see you again.

Tali & Shepard: Good to see you too Emily.

Emily Wong: Now then, before we get onto you two, I have a question for you, Shepard.

Shepard: Of course.

Emily Wong: Shepard, it was nearly two and a half years ago that you and your team defeated Saren and his geth here on the Citadel. Three months later, all of you disappeared off of the radar. Can you explain what happened?

There is a long pause, Tali grabs Shepard's hand, Shepard takes a deep breath

Shepard: While on a routine mission looking for geth insurgents, the Normandy was ambushed by an unknown enemy ship, later identified as belonging to the Collectors. We never stood a chance. I ordered a general evac, and most of the crew were able to make it to the escape pods. My pilot, Jeff Moreau, remained in the cockpit in the hopes he could save the ship. I ran to the bridge to force him to evacuate. I was able to get him safely to the escape pod, but before I could get inside the Normandy was gutted by a nearby energy projectile. The force threw me against the bulkhead, and my only option was to manually press the eject button for the pod.

Emily Wong: ...So, how did you survive that?

Shepard: ...I didn't...A fuel line sparked and detonated, tossing me into space. I watched as the Normandy disintegrated around me. I thought there was a chance I would make it, but as the ship finally exploded, a piece of shrapnel severed my oxygen supply. The last thing I remember from that was struggling vainly to maximize my oxygen supply...I suffocated in under fifteen seconds.

An extremely long pause

Emily Wong: My god...how...how are you here now?

Shepard: I got lucky, with a lot of strings attached. Cerberus, the pro-human group, recovered my body. They spent two years working with their top scientists, attempting to bring me back. Two years and 12 days later, they succeeded, and I awoke from their medically induced coma.

Emily Wong: This is...unbelievable. Miss Zorah, did you or anyone else know about this?

Tali: No, we weren't told a thing. At the time, we all still thought Shepard was dead. It was...the most shocking moment of my life when he returned...looking exactly as he did on the day he was killed.

Emily Wong: It...must have been very difficult for you when Shepard died.

Tali: Yes...it was. I think it was the biggest loss any of us have ever experienced. Shepard was more than a commander...her was our friend. Losing him tore us apart...and we all went our separate ways.

Emily Wong: So...um...when you were brought back, what was your reaction?

Shepard: It was a mixture of disbelief and anger...but mostly it was a sense of deep loneliness. Two years had gone by in the span of a couple of minutes for me, and not knowing what had happened to everyone I knew was devastating.

Emily Wong: I can imagine. Can you tell us why Cerberus spent so much time and effort bringing you back to life?

Shepard: They brought me back to investigate the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of human colonists in the Terminus Systems. As repayment for my resurrection, Cerberus asked that I investigate the recently attacked colony of Freedom's Progress in the hopes we could get a clue as to what happened there. I'm...afraid I can't reveal anything more detailed than that at this time.

Emily Wong: I understand, and thank you for being so candid. With that, we're going to take a short break.