An unnamed intelligence operative, recruited into a shadow war fought through time-inverted weapons and objects, teams with an enigmatic ally to stop a dying Russian oligarch from using technology gifted by a dying future to erase the present.

1. Scenes 1–17

   The Protagonist in his zone of comfort — a skilled, anonymous field operative, competent and confident inside the Kiev operation.

2. Scenes 18–20

   Broken by torture and 'killed,' he needs a new purpose; Fay offers one that transcends the nation-state loyalties that just got his team killed.

3. Scenes 21–32

   He enters the wholly unfamiliar situation of Tenet — the wind turbine, the password test, and Barbara's proof that time itself can run backward.

4. Scene 47

   The Protagonist begins surveilling Kat at her son's school gates — he commits to using her marriage against Sator, entering the upside-down world of the operation proper.

5. Scene 51

   Kat's appraisal-room scene with the forged Goya begins the relationship — with Kat, and by extension her son Max — that will carry the story's theme of what a parent will do to save a child.

6. Scene 111

   The Protagonist re-approaches Kat at Amalfi to use her as his entry to Sator, formally locking him into the Sator operation rather than working it from the outside.

7. Just before
8. Scene 113

   The Protagonist speeds Kat over to the yacht by boat, drawing Sator's notice.

9. Scene 114

   Sator confronts Kat about the American stranger she brought aboard.

10. Scene 115

    Sator menaces the Protagonist over dinner until the mention of opera intrigues him and wins an invitation.

11. Scene 116

    This scene