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. Just before
7. Scene 87

   Hearing the explosion, the pair start holding their breath as the puzzled staff member watches.

8. Scene 88

   Mahir forces the pilots out of their seats.

9. Scene 89

   The pilots escape the taxiing plane down an emergency slide.

10. Scene 90

    This scene