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 96

   Catching their breath, Neil senses someone else is in the vaults with them.

8. Scene 97

   The Protagonist finds a mirrored two-room chamber with a mysterious revolving-door 'turnstile' and self-healing bullet holes in the glass.

9. Scene 98

   Neil gives chase to a fleeing masked figure in the corridor.

10. Scene 99

    This scene