THE STORY

JAYCE wanted solitude. The colony found him anyway.

High above the Pacific, JAYCE lives alone in an isolated Malibu cliff house, far enough from civilization that the crashing surf and coastal fog are usually his only company. Then a group of surfers arrives.

At first, they’re merely trespassers. They surf the break below his property, drink on his beach, sleep where they shouldn’t and treat Jayce’s secluded home like their private clubhouse. But they don’t leave.

More arrive.

Led by the charismatic and volatile ZANE, the surfers begin occupying the property with an eerie sense of entitlement. They throw parties, take food, move Jayce’s belongings and exploit every loophole they can to make removing them nearly impossible. What begins as a property dispute becomes a siege as Jayce realizes the group doesn’t behave like ordinary squatters. They move together. Protect one another instinctively. Build strange hexagonal structures. And sometimes, when the house becomes completely quiet, Jayce can hear them humming.

Then there is LAYLA.

Beautiful, calm and seemingly separate from the chaos, Layla becomes the only member of the group who appears sympathetic to Jayce. She brings food. She talks to him. She listens. While Zane and the others push deeper into Jayce’s life, Layla draws closer to him.

Jayce begins discovering evidence that what is happening at his house has happened before. Different homes. Different communities. The same strange patterns. The same sudden gatherings. The same disappearances.

The surfers aren’t a gang.

They’re workers.

And Layla isn’t another member of their group.

She is LAYLA NIBI — their Queen.

The invasion was never about stealing Jayce’s house. The house is only the nest.

Jayce is why they came.

As an approaching Pacific storm cuts the property off beneath sheets of rain, ocean fog and pounding surf, Jayce finds himself trapped inside a living human hive whose members will sacrifice themselves without hesitation to protect their Queen.

And when Layla reveals that she is carrying the beginning of the next colony, Jayce finally understands the horrifying biological ritual unfolding around him.

The Queen has chosen her mate.

And in this colony, the male doesn’t survive reproduction.

Jayce must destroy the hive before dawn—or become the final nourishment for something that has survived by hiding inside human civilization for centuries.

But destroying one nest doesn’t destroy the species.

Because somewhere along another lonely stretch of coastline, someone is looking for a home.

And the hive always finds one.

Genre.	Post-TRILLER / HORROR / SUSPENSE / CREATURE
Format	Feature Film / Limited Series
Status	In Development
Universe	DLHERO Studios
Writer/Director	Joshua Robert Castaneda